$100 in 1970 is worth $337 in 1990,
because prices increased 236.9% over that period, an average of
6.26% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$337
in 1990
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
236.9%
Average inflation rate
6.26% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$337
Price difference ($100 base)
$237
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1990
130.7
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1990
5.40%
$100 in 1970 → 1990
$337
$100 in 1990 → 1970
$29.69
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1990
Between 1970 and 1990, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 130.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 236.9%, which works out to an average of
6.26% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.30 buys in 1990: the 1970 dollar
lost 70.3% of its purchasing power over
these 20 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 1990 at the same ratio, 3.37: $1,000 becomes
$3,369, and $10,000 becomes $33,686.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1990
$1.00
$3.37
$5.00
$16.84
$10.00
$33.69
$20.00
$67.37
$50.00
$168
$100
$337
$500
$1,684
$1,000
$3,369
$5,000
$16,843
$10,000
$33,686
$100,000
$336,856
$1,000,000
$3,368,557
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1990
Between 1970 and 1990, medical care rose the most, up 378.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 109.6%, against 236.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1990, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.26%
$337
Medical care
8.15%
$479
Energy
7.18%
$400
Housing
6.51%
$353
Food
6.27%
$338
Core (all items less food & energy)
6.19%
$332
Transportation
6.01%
$321
Apparel
3.77%
$210
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 1990
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1980s (4.72% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–1990 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1970, at end
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$212
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$337
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $212 by
1980, on its way to $337 in 1990; 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 1.9% in 1986.
In 1990, prices rose 5.4% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $337; the year's average CPI of 130.7 is the level
behind every 1990 figure on this page.
In 1990, the median U.S. household earned about $29,900, gas averaged $1.15 a
gallon, and mailing a letter cost a quarter. Inflation ran hot at 5.4% for the
year, its highest rate since 1982, pushed up by an oil shock after Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, and the economy tipped into recession that summer. It was
the last gasp of elevated inflation before the long calm of the 1990s.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1990: $100 is worth $337 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1990/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1990. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1990/