Value of $100 in 1997, adjusted to 2024

What happened to prices between 1997 and 2024

Between 1997 and 2024, the Consumer Price Index went from 160.5 to 313.689. Cumulatively, prices increased 95.4%, which works out to an average of 2.51% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1997 bought what $0.51 buys in 2024: the 1997 dollar lost 48.8% of its purchasing power over these 27 years.

The median household earned about $37,000 in 1997, gas averaged $1.23 a gallon, and a new home cost roughly $146,000. Inflation ran at 2.3% for the year, its lowest reading since the mid-1980s, as a strong dollar and falling import prices helped keep costs in check at home even as trouble built abroad. In July, Thailand devalued the baht, and the currency collapse that followed spread within months to Indonesia, South Korea, and other Southeast Asian economies, forcing IMF bailouts and years of recession across the region, though the crisis had little immediate effect on U.S. prices. At home, Washington had a calmer year: in August, President Clinton and Congress agreed on the Balanced Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act, which cut capital gains tax rates, created the Roth IRA, and set the federal budget on a path to its first surplus in nearly three decades. In September, the federal minimum wage completed a two-step rise to $5.15 an hour, where it would stay for a decade. Low inflation, a firming budget picture, and a crisis unfolding an ocean away made 1997 a year the U.S. economy looked stronger than much of the rest of the world’s.

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The destination year: 2024

In 2024, prices rose 2.9% and $100 from 1997 had the buying power of $195; the year's average CPI of 313.689 is the level behind every 2024 figure on this page.

2024 brought inflation close to normal without fully reaching it. Consumer prices rose 2.9% on average, the smallest yearly increase since 2020, and the December-to-December rate was also 2.9%. Gasoline averaged $3.30 a gallon, below 2023’s $3.52. Shelter stayed the biggest driver of the index, so the pace of price growth in categories that households can’t easily avoid, such as rent and insurance, lagged the drop in goods and energy costs.

The Federal Reserve declared progress in September, cutting its policy rate by half a point, the first reduction since the pandemic emergency, and then by a quarter point in November and again in December. Mortgage rates near 7% kept the housing market frozen for many would-be buyers.

Median household income was $83,730, the federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25, and a first-class stamp rose to 73 cents in July. After the November election, attention turned to how announced tariffs and tax policy might affect prices in 2025.

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