$100 in 1970 is worth $487 in 2004,
because prices increased 386.9% over that period, an average of
4.77% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$487
in 2004
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
386.9%
Average inflation rate
4.77% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$487
Price difference ($100 base)
$387
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2004
188.9
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2004
2.66%
$100 in 1970 → 2004
$487
$100 in 2004 → 1970
$20.54
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2004
Between 1970 and 2004, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 188.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 386.9%, which works out to an average of
4.77% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.21 buys in 2004: the 1970 dollar
lost 79.5% of its purchasing power over
these 34 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 2004 at the same ratio, 4.87: $1,000 becomes
$4,869, and $10,000 becomes $48,686.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2004
$1.00
$4.87
$5.00
$24.34
$10.00
$48.69
$20.00
$97.37
$50.00
$243
$100
$487
$500
$2,434
$1,000
$4,869
$5,000
$24,343
$10,000
$48,686
$100,000
$486,856
$1,000,000
$4,868,557
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2004
Between 1970 and 2004, medical care rose the most, up 812.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 103.4%, against 386.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2004, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.77%
$487
Medical care
6.72%
$912
Energy
5.38%
$594
Housing
4.97%
$521
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.73%
$482
Food
4.69%
$475
Transportation
4.42%
$435
Apparel
2.11%
$203
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2004
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.34% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2004 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
2000–2004
2.34%
9.7%
$487
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $282 by
1986, on its way to $487 in 2004; 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: 2004
In 2004, prices rose 2.7% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $487; the year's average CPI of 188.9 is the level
behind every 2004 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in 2004, with a 29-cent jump in the price of gasoline, to $1.88 a
gallon, doing much of the work. Crude oil passed $50 a barrel in October on rising demand
from China and India. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in four years on
June 30, to 1.25%, and it kept going: 17 consecutive quarter-point increases took the rate to
5.25% by June 2006. Housing was already running ahead of incomes. The median household earned
about $44,300, up 2.3% from 2003, while the median new home sold for $221,000, up about 13%. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15, unchanged since
1997.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2004: $100 is worth $487 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2004/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2004. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2004/