$100 in 1970 is worth $667 in 2020,
because prices increased 567.0% over that period, an average of
3.87% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$667
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
567.0%
Average inflation rate
3.87% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$667
Price difference ($100 base)
$567
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1970 → 2020
$667
$100 in 2020 → 1970
$14.99
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2020
Between 1970 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 567.0%, which works out to an average of
3.87% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.15 buys in 2020: the 1970 dollar
lost 85.0% of its purchasing power over
these 50 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 2020 at the same ratio, 6.67: $1,000 becomes
$6,670, and $10,000 becomes $66,704.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2020
$1.00
$6.67
$5.00
$33.35
$10.00
$66.70
$20.00
$133
$50.00
$334
$100
$667
$500
$3,335
$1,000
$6,670
$5,000
$33,352
$10,000
$66,704
$100,000
$667,039
$1,000,000
$6,670,387
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2020
Between 1970 and 2020, medical care rose the most, up 1426.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 99.5%, against 567.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.87%
$667
Medical care
5.60%
$1,526
Energy
4.17%
$772
Housing
4.10%
$747
Food
3.91%
$682
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.83%
$656
Transportation
3.42%
$537
Apparel
1.39%
$199
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2020
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2010s (1.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1970–2020 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
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$667
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $382 by
1994, on its way to $667 in 2020; 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: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $667; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2020: $100 is worth $667 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2020/