Between 1978 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 65.2 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 348.9%, which works out to an average of
3.47% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1978 bought what
$0.22 buys in 2022.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1978 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1978 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.47%
$449
Medical care
5.08%
$884
Energy
4.03%
$568
Housing
3.64%
$482
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.47%
$449
Transportation
3.38%
$432
Food
3.34%
$424
Apparel
1.02%
$156
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1978: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2022
2022 was the year inflation returned. Consumer prices rose 8.0% on average,
the worst since 1981, driven by pandemic-era supply chains, stimulus-fueled
demand, and an energy shock from the war in Ukraine. Gas briefly topped $5 a
gallon nationally for the first time ever, and “inflation” became the
top-ranked economic concern in nearly every poll of American households.
MLA: “Inflation from 1978 to 2022: $100 is worth $449 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1978-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1978 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1978-to-2022/