$100 in 1970 is worth $249 in 1982,
because prices increased 148.7% over that period, an average of
7.89% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$249
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
148.7%
Average inflation rate
7.89% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$249
Price difference ($100 base)
$149
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1970 → 1982
$249
$100 in 1982 → 1970
$40.21
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1982
Between 1970 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 148.7%, which works out to an average of
7.89% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.40 buys in 1982: the 1970 dollar
lost 59.8% of its purchasing power over
these 12 years.
Consumer prices rose 5.7% in 1970, up from 1969’s 5.5%, extending a
run of faster price growth that stretched back to the mid-1960s, even as a
recession that began in December 1969 pushed unemployment toward 6%. Prices
and joblessness rising together confounded the era’s economic thinking, which
held that policymakers could trade a little more inflation for a little less
unemployment; 1970 was an early sign that trade-off was breaking down, a
pattern that would harden into stagflation later in the decade. Washington
restructured how it delivered mail that year: after postal workers staged the
first strike ever by federal employees that March, Congress passed the Postal
Reorganization Act in August, replacing the cabinet-level Post Office
Department with the independent U.S. Postal Service. Environmental policy
also took shape in 1970. An estimated 20 million Americans marked the first
Earth Day on April 22, and the Environmental Protection Agency opened that
December to enforce the Clean Air Act and the pollution rules that followed.
The Vietnam War kept dividing the country: on May 4, National Guard troops
fired on antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four
students and setting off strikes on hundreds of campuses. A median household
earned $8,734 that year, a gallon of gas averaged 36 cents, and a first-class
stamp cost 6 cents, the rate it had held since 1968. Prices stood 291.9%
above their 1913 level by the end of 1970, a milestone that
would look almost mild against the decade still to come.
Every 1970 amount converts to 1982 at the same ratio, 2.49: $1,000 becomes
$2,487, and $10,000 becomes $24,871.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1982
$1.00
$2.49
$5.00
$12.44
$10.00
$24.87
$20.00
$49.74
$50.00
$124
$100
$249
$500
$1,244
$1,000
$2,487
$5,000
$12,436
$10,000
$24,871
$100,000
$248,711
$1,000,000
$2,487,113
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1982
Between 1970 and 1982, energy rose the most, up 289.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 65.2%, against 148.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
7.89%
$249
Energy
11.99%
$389
Medical care
8.70%
$272
Housing
8.50%
$266
Transportation
8.24%
$259
Food
7.88%
$248
Core (all items less food & energy)
7.37%
$235
Apparel
4.27%
$165
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and slowest in the 1970s (7.82% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–1982 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1970, at end
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$212
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$249
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $147 by
1976, on its way to $249 in 1982; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and the smallest rise was 3.2% in 1972.
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $249; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1982: $100 is worth $249 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1982/