$100 in 1970 is worth $555 in 2008,
because prices increased 454.9% over that period, an average of
4.61% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$555
in 2008
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
454.9%
Average inflation rate
4.61% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$555
Price difference ($100 base)
$455
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2008
215.303
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2008
3.84%
$100 in 1970 → 2008
$555
$100 in 2008 → 1970
$18.02
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2008
Between 1970 and 2008, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 215.303.
Cumulatively, prices increased 454.9%, which works out to an average of
4.61% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.18 buys in 2008: the 1970 dollar
lost 82.0% of its purchasing power over
these 38 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 2008 at the same ratio, 5.55: $1,000 becomes
$5,549, and $10,000 becomes $55,490.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2008
$1.00
$5.55
$5.00
$27.75
$10.00
$55.49
$20.00
$111
$50.00
$277
$100
$555
$500
$2,775
$1,000
$5,549
$5,000
$27,745
$10,000
$55,490
$100,000
$554,905
$1,000,000
$5,549,046
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2008
Between 1970 and 2008, medical care rose the most, up 970.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 100.9%, against 454.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2008, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.61%
$555
Medical care
6.44%
$1,071
Energy
6.04%
$928
Housing
4.80%
$594
Food
4.57%
$546
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.48%
$528
Transportation
4.44%
$521
Apparel
1.85%
$201
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2008
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1990s (2.80% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2008 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
2000–2008
2.83%
25.0%
$555
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $305 by
1988, on its way to $555 in 2008; 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: 2008
In 2008, prices rose 3.8% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $555; the year's average CPI of 215.303 is the level
behind every 2008 figure on this page.
Inflation averaged 3.8% in 2008, but that figure hides a swing. The 12-month rate reached 5.6% in
July, when oil hit $147 a barrel and gasoline passed $4 a gallon, then fell to 0.1% by December
as crude dropped near $40. For the year, gas averaged $3.27, the highest yet. The financial
system broke in the fall: Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, Congress
created the $700 billion TARP bank rescue on October 3, and the Federal Reserve cut its policy
rate to a range of 0–0.25% in December. The median household earned about $50,300, barely
above 2007, and the median new home price fell to $232,100. The minimum wage rose to $6.55 in
July, and a first-class stamp cost 42 cents. The price collapse at the end of 2008 set up the
deflation of 2009.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2008: $100 is worth $555 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2008/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2008. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2008/