$100 in 1970 is worth $474 in 2003,
because prices increased 374.2% over that period, an average of
4.83% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$474
in 2003
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
374.2%
Average inflation rate
4.83% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$474
Price difference ($100 base)
$374
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2003
184
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2003
2.28%
$100 in 1970 → 2003
$474
$100 in 2003 → 1970
$21.09
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2003
Between 1970 and 2003, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 184.
Cumulatively, prices increased 374.2%, which works out to an average of
4.83% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.21 buys in 2003: the 1970 dollar
lost 78.9% of its purchasing power over
these 33 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 2003 at the same ratio, 4.74: $1,000 becomes
$4,742, and $10,000 becomes $47,423.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2003
$1.00
$4.74
$5.00
$23.71
$10.00
$47.42
$20.00
$94.85
$50.00
$237
$100
$474
$500
$2,371
$1,000
$4,742
$5,000
$23,711
$10,000
$47,423
$100,000
$474,227
$1,000,000
$4,742,268
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2003
Between 1970 and 2003, medical care rose the most, up 773.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 104.2%, against 374.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2003, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.83%
$474
Medical care
6.79%
$874
Energy
5.22%
$535
Housing
5.05%
$508
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.83%
$474
Food
4.73%
$459
Transportation
4.45%
$420
Apparel
2.19%
$204
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2003
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.23% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2003 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
2000–2003
2.23%
6.9%
$474
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $282 by
1986, on its way to $474 in 2003; 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: 2003
In 2003, prices rose 2.3% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $474; the year's average CPI of 184 is the level
behind every 2003 figure on this page.
Inflation was 2.3% in 2003, up from 1.6% in 2002, as gasoline climbed from $1.36 to $1.59 a
gallon around the March invasion of Iraq. Even so, the Federal Reserve spent the year worried
about prices being too low: on June 25 it cut its policy rate to 1.0%, the lowest since 1958,
and said the risk of deflation, though small, deserved a response. The median household earned
about $43,300 and a new home cost roughly $195,000. Congress passed a second round of tax cuts
in May, and the economy grew faster in the second half of the year than at any point since
1999. Hiring lagged the recovery, and unemployment peaked at 6.3% in June. A first-class stamp
stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2003: $100 is worth $474 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2003/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2003. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2003/