$100 in 1970 is worth $464 in 2002,
because prices increased 363.7% over that period, an average of
4.91% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$464
in 2002
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
363.7%
Average inflation rate
4.91% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$464
Price difference ($100 base)
$364
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2002
179.9
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2002
1.58%
$100 in 1970 → 2002
$464
$100 in 2002 → 1970
$21.57
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2002
Between 1970 and 2002, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 179.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 363.7%, which works out to an average of
4.91% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.22 buys in 2002: the 1970 dollar
lost 78.4% of its purchasing power over
these 32 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 2002 at the same ratio, 4.64: $1,000 becomes
$4,637, and $10,000 becomes $46,366.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2002
$1.00
$4.64
$5.00
$23.18
$10.00
$46.37
$20.00
$92.73
$50.00
$232
$100
$464
$500
$2,318
$1,000
$4,637
$5,000
$23,183
$10,000
$46,366
$100,000
$463,660
$1,000,000
$4,636,598
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2002
Between 1970 and 2002, medical care rose the most, up 740.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 109.5%, against 363.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2002, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.91%
$464
Medical care
6.88%
$840
Housing
5.13%
$495
Energy
5.01%
$477
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.93%
$467
Food
4.81%
$449
Transportation
4.49%
$408
Apparel
2.34%
$209
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2002
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.21% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2002 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
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$444
2000–2002
2.21%
4.5%
$464
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $282 by
1986, on its way to $464 in 2002; 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 1.6% in 1998.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2002
In 2002, prices rose 1.6% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $464; the year's average CPI of 179.9 is the level
behind every 2002 figure on this page.
The CPI rose 1.6% in 2002, the lowest annual rate of the decade so far, with gasoline down to an
average of $1.36 a gallon and slack in the labor market keeping wage pressure low. The median
household earned about $42,400, and a new home cost roughly $187,600, an increase of about 7%
from the year before as low mortgage rates began to lift housing. The Federal Reserve cut its
policy rate to 1.25% in November. Stocks were moving the other way: after the Enron and WorldCom
scandals, the S&P 500 hit its bear-market low on October 9, about 49% below its March 2000
peak, and Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in July to tighten corporate accounting rules.
On January 1, euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 European countries. A
first-class stamp rose to 37 cents in June, and the federal minimum wage stayed at $5.15.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2002: $100 is worth $464 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2002/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2002. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2002/