$100 in 1970 is worth $611 in 2015,
because prices increased 510.9% over that period, an average of
4.10% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$611
in 2015
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
510.9%
Average inflation rate
4.10% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$611
Price difference ($100 base)
$511
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2015
237.017
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2015
0.12%
$100 in 1970 → 2015
$611
$100 in 2015 → 1970
$16.37
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2015
Between 1970 and 2015, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 237.017.
Cumulatively, prices increased 510.9%, which works out to an average of
4.10% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.16 buys in 2015: the 1970 dollar
lost 83.6% of its purchasing power over
these 45 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 2015 at the same ratio, 6.11: $1,000 becomes
$6,109, and $10,000 becomes $61,087.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2015
$1.00
$6.11
$5.00
$30.54
$10.00
$61.09
$20.00
$122
$50.00
$305
$100
$611
$500
$3,054
$1,000
$6,109
$5,000
$30,543
$10,000
$61,087
$100,000
$610,869
$1,000,000
$6,108,686
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2015
Between 1970 and 2015, medical care rose the most, up 1214.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 112.7%, against 510.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2015, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.10%
$611
Medical care
5.89%
$1,314
Energy
4.72%
$796
Housing
4.26%
$654
Food
4.18%
$631
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.04%
$594
Transportation
3.78%
$531
Apparel
1.69%
$213
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2015
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2010s (1.68% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2015 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
2010–2015
1.68%
8.7%
$611
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $362 by
1992, on its way to $611 in 2015; 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: 2015
In 2015, prices rose 0.1% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $611; the year's average CPI of 237.017 is the level
behind every 2015 figure on this page.
2015 was almost a year with no inflation at all. Consumer prices rose 0.1%,
the smallest increase since the 2009 decline, because energy prices kept
falling. Gasoline averaged $2.45 a gallon, down from $3.37 in 2014, and a
strong dollar made imported goods cheaper. The picture was different outside
food and energy: core prices rose about 1.8% as rents and medical costs
climbed.
Incomes finally showed real progress. Median household income reached $56,516,
a large jump from $53,657, and the median new home sold for about $296,400. The
federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25, and a first-class stamp stayed at 49
cents.
The Federal Reserve chose December to end its zero-rate policy, raising the
target range to 0.25–0.50% for the first time since 2006. It moved even
though headline inflation was far under 2%, arguing that the drag from
energy was temporary. Earlier, a currency shift in China in August had shaken
global markets and pushed oil below $40 a barrel. Prices in 2015 ended
the year barely above their 2014 level.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2015: $100 is worth $611 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2015/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2015. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2015/