$100 in 1978 is worth $345 in 2011,
because prices increased 245.0% over that period, an average of
3.82% a year.
$100 in 1978 has
the same buying power as
$345
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
245.0%
Average inflation rate
3.82% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$345
Price difference ($100 base)
$245
CPI in 1978
65.2
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1978
7.59%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1978 → 2011
$345
$100 in 2011 → 1978
$28.99
What happened to prices between 1978 and 2011
Between 1978 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 65.2 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 245.0%, which works out to an average of
3.82% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1978 bought what
$0.29 buys in 2011: the 1978 dollar
lost 71.0% of its purchasing power over
these 33 years.
Consumer prices rose 7.6% in 1978, accelerating for a second straight year as
rising wages, a weakening dollar, and climbing energy costs outpaced the
Federal Reserve’s response. Fed chairman G. William Miller, appointed by
Carter that March, kept interest rates too low to slow the trend, a policy
later cited as one reason inflation kept building toward the following year’s
crisis. California voters responded to their own version of the problem that
June, passing Proposition 13 by nearly two to one to cap property tax rates
after years of rising home values had pushed tax bills up alongside them.
Foreign policy delivered one of the decade’s genuine breakthroughs: President
Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin together for thirteen days of negotiations at Camp David that
September, producing a framework for peace between the two countries that was
signed as a treaty the following March. First-class postage rose to 15 cents
that May 29, a rate that would hold longer than any other in the decade. The
year ended in tragedy: cult leader Jim Jones directed the mass murder-suicide
of more than 900 followers at a remote settlement in Guyana that November 18.
A median household earned $15,064 in 1978, a new home sold for a median
$55,700, and gas averaged 63 cents a gallon. Consumer prices stood 558.6%
above their 1913 level, with the decade’s worst inflation
still to come.
Every 1978 amount converts to 2011 at the same ratio, 3.45: $1,000 becomes
$3,450, and $10,000 becomes $34,500.
Amount in 1978
Value in 2011
$1.00
$3.45
$5.00
$17.25
$10.00
$34.50
$20.00
$69.00
$50.00
$172
$100
$345
$500
$1,725
$1,000
$3,450
$5,000
$17,250
$10,000
$34,500
$100,000
$344,998
$1,000,000
$3,449,985
Inflation by spending category, 1978–2011
Between 1978 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 547.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 50.0%, against 245.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1978
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1978 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.82%
$345
Medical care
5.82%
$648
Energy
4.76%
$465
Housing
3.88%
$351
Transportation
3.82%
$344
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.81%
$344
Food
3.55%
$316
Apparel
1.24%
$150
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1978: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1978 to 2011
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 12.42% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1978–2011 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1978, at end
1978–1980
12.42%
26.4%
$126
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$200
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$264
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$334
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$345
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1978
$100 from 1978 had already become $227 by
1994, on its way to $345 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 1978 had the buying
power of $345; 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 1978 to 2011: $100 is worth $345 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1978-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1978 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1978-to-2011/