$100 in 1970 is worth $580 in 2011,
because prices increased 479.7% over that period, an average of
4.38% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$580
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
479.7%
Average inflation rate
4.38% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$580
Price difference ($100 base)
$480
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1970 → 2011
$580
$100 in 2011 → 1970
$17.25
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2011
Between 1970 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 479.7%, which works out to an average of
4.38% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.17 buys in 2011: the 1970 dollar
lost 82.8% of its purchasing power over
these 41 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 2011 at the same ratio, 5.80: $1,000 becomes
$5,797, and $10,000 becomes $57,974.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2011
$1.00
$5.80
$5.00
$28.99
$10.00
$57.97
$20.00
$116
$50.00
$290
$100
$580
$500
$2,899
$1,000
$5,797
$5,000
$28,987
$10,000
$57,974
$100,000
$579,740
$1,000,000
$5,797,397
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2011
Between 1970 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 1077.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 106.3%, against 479.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.38%
$580
Medical care
6.20%
$1,177
Energy
5.66%
$957
Housing
4.48%
$602
Food
4.39%
$581
Transportation
4.32%
$566
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.25%
$551
Apparel
1.78%
$206
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2011
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 1970–2011 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
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$580
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $337 by
1990, on its way to $580 in 2011; 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: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $580; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2011: $100 is worth $580 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2011/