$100 in 1970 is worth $562 in 2010,
because prices increased 462.0% over that period, an average of
4.41% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$562
in 2010
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
462.0%
Average inflation rate
4.41% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$562
Price difference ($100 base)
$462
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2010
218.056
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2010
1.64%
$100 in 1970 → 2010
$562
$100 in 2010 → 1970
$17.79
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2010
Between 1970 and 2010, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 218.056.
Cumulatively, prices increased 462.0%, which works out to an average of
4.41% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.18 buys in 2010: the 1970 dollar
lost 82.2% of its purchasing power over
these 40 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 2010 at the same ratio, 5.62: $1,000 becomes
$5,620, and $10,000 becomes $56,200.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2010
$1.00
$5.62
$5.00
$28.10
$10.00
$56.20
$20.00
$112
$50.00
$281
$100
$562
$500
$2,810
$1,000
$5,620
$5,000
$28,100
$10,000
$56,200
$100,000
$562,000
$1,000,000
$5,620,000
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2010
Between 1970 and 2010, medical care rose the most, up 1042.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 101.9%, against 462.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2010, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.41%
$562
Medical care
6.28%
$1,142
Energy
5.43%
$829
Housing
4.56%
$594
Food
4.40%
$560
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.32%
$542
Transportation
4.19%
$516
Apparel
1.77%
$202
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2010
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2010 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$562
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $337 by
1990, on its way to $562 in 2010; 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 prices fell 0.4% in 2009, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2010
In 2010, prices rose 1.6% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $562; the year's average CPI of 218.056 is the level
behind every 2010 figure on this page.
2010 was a year of recovery without much price pressure. The CPI rose 1.6%, a
return to growth after 2009’s deflation, with gasoline averaging $2.78 a
gallon as energy prices climbed back from their recession lows. Housing costs
barely moved: millions of foreclosed and vacant homes kept rents soft, and the
median new home sold for about $221,800. The federal minimum wage stayed at
$7.25, the level set in July 2009, and a first-class stamp cost 44 cents.
The Federal Reserve was more worried about too little inflation than too
much. Its policy rate sat at 0–0.25%, and in November it announced a further
$600 billion of Treasury purchases to hold down long-term borrowing costs.
Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act in July to tighten financial regulation,
while a 110 billion euro rescue of Greece in May showed that the crisis had
moved from American mortgages to European government debt. For anyone
comparing dollars across the decade, 2010 is a useful baseline: prices were
still close to their 2008 levels, and the years ahead brought a slow, steady
climb.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2010: $100 is worth $562 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2010/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2010. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2010/