$100 in 1970 is worth $520 in 2006,
because prices increased 419.6% over that period, an average of
4.68% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$520
in 2006
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
419.6%
Average inflation rate
4.68% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$520
Price difference ($100 base)
$420
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2006
201.6
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2006
3.23%
$100 in 1970 → 2006
$520
$100 in 2006 → 1970
$19.25
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2006
Between 1970 and 2006, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 201.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 419.6%, which works out to an average of
4.68% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.19 buys in 2006: the 1970 dollar
lost 80.8% of its purchasing power over
these 36 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 2006 at the same ratio, 5.20: $1,000 becomes
$5,196, and $10,000 becomes $51,959.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2006
$1.00
$5.20
$5.00
$25.98
$10.00
$51.96
$20.00
$104
$50.00
$260
$100
$520
$500
$2,598
$1,000
$5,196
$5,000
$25,979
$10,000
$51,959
$100,000
$519,588
$1,000,000
$5,195,876
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2006
Between 1970 and 2006, medical care rose the most, up 888.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 101.9%, against 419.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2006, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.68%
$520
Medical care
6.57%
$989
Energy
5.84%
$772
Housing
4.89%
$558
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.60%
$505
Food
4.56%
$498
Transportation
4.47%
$482
Apparel
1.97%
$202
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2006
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.66% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2006 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
2000–2006
2.66%
17.1%
$520
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $305 by
1988, on its way to $520 in 2006; 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: 2006
In 2006, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $520; the year's average CPI of 201.6 is the level
behind every 2006 figure on this page.
Inflation was 3.2% in 2006 and gasoline averaged $2.59 a gallon, up 29 cents from 2005. The
median household earned about $48,200 and the median new home cost $246,500, a gain of about
2% after a 13% jump in 2004 and 9% in 2005. National home prices, by the S&P/Case-Shiller
index, peaked in mid-2006. Ben Bernanke replaced Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chair on
February 1, and on June 29 the Fed raised its policy rate to 5.25%, the last of 17 straight
quarter-point increases. It held there for over a year. A first-class stamp rose to 39 cents in
January, and the federal minimum wage was $5.15 for the ninth full year in a row.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2006: $100 is worth $520 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2006/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2006. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2006/