$100 in 1970 is worth $698 in 2021,
because prices increased 598.4% over that period, an average of
3.88% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$698
in 2021
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
598.4%
Average inflation rate
3.88% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$698
Price difference ($100 base)
$598
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 2021
270.97
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 2021
4.70%
$100 in 1970 → 2021
$698
$100 in 2021 → 1970
$14.32
What happened to prices between 1970 and 2021
Between 1970 and 2021, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 270.97.
Cumulatively, prices increased 598.4%, which works out to an average of
3.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.14 buys in 2021: the 1970 dollar
lost 85.7% of its purchasing power over
these 51 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 2021 at the same ratio, 6.98: $1,000 becomes
$6,984, and $10,000 becomes $69,838.
Amount in 1970
Value in 2021
$1.00
$6.98
$5.00
$34.92
$10.00
$69.84
$20.00
$140
$50.00
$349
$100
$698
$500
$3,492
$1,000
$6,984
$5,000
$34,919
$10,000
$69,838
$100,000
$698,376
$1,000,000
$6,983,763
Inflation by spending category, 1970–2021
Between 1970 and 2021, medical care rose the most, up 1444.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 104.4%, against 598.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 2021, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.88%
$698
Medical care
5.51%
$1,545
Energy
4.48%
$935
Housing
4.09%
$771
Food
3.91%
$709
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.83%
$680
Transportation
3.63%
$615
Apparel
1.41%
$204
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1970 to 2021
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 1970–2021 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
2020–2021
4.70%
4.7%
$698
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $404 by
1996, on its way to $698 in 2021; 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: 2021
In 2021, prices rose 4.7% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $698; the year's average CPI of 270.97 is the level
behind every 2021 figure on this page.
2021 was the year inflation stopped being background noise. Consumer prices
rose 4.7% on average for the year, and the pace kept building as the months
went on: by December, the 12-month rate had reached 7.0%, the highest since
1982. The proximate cause was a supply chain that could not keep up with a
fast-reopening economy. A global semiconductor shortage choked new car
production and pushed used vehicle prices up by more than a third, the
single largest line item in the year’s inflation math. Lumber, appliances,
and shipping capacity told versions of the same story: demand snapped back
faster than factories, ports, and truckers could handle it. Washington added
fuel in March with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, on top of the
relief already in the pipeline since 2020. For most of the year, the Federal
Reserve called the price surge “transitory,” a temporary reopening effect
expected to fade on its own, and held its policy rate near zero. By
November, with inflation still climbing, the Fed reversed course and began
winding down its bond purchases, the first step toward the rate hikes that
would follow in 2022. Gas averaged $3.01 a gallon for the year, up from
about $2.17 in 2020, while the federal minimum wage held at $7.25,
unchanged since 2009. In hindsight, 2021 reads as the hinge year: the point
where “transitory” inflation became the multi-year fight the Fed spent the
next two years trying to win.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 2021: $100 is worth $698 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2021/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 2021. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-2021/