What are you converting?
£100 left in cash since January 1970 now buys what £4.27 bought then
UK figures are RPI, not CPI. RPI is the only single Office for National Statistics series that reaches back to 1947, and it runs roughly 0.8 percentage points a year above CPI, so a pound figure here will not line up exactly against a CPI-based figure for another country.
To buy today what £100 bought in January 1970, you would need £2,342.
Prices rose 2242% in total, an average of 5.74% a year.
Office for National Statistics, Retail Prices Index long run series. RPI, not CPI. It is the only single ONS series reaching 1947, and it runs roughly 0.8 percentage points above CPI. Covers June 1947 to July 2026. This tracks GBP's own domestic prices over time, not an exchange rate: switching currency changes which country's record you are reading, it does not convert between them. Download every currency as CSV and check it yourself.
What £100 left in cash has been able to buy, year by year
The same 100, in 5 currencies, since 1970
Two rich countries can be a factor of 6 apart over the same span. The euro is not on this chart: its price series only begins in December 1996, so a line for it would start decades late at the same baseline as every currency here that has been compounding since 1970, making the euro area look like a low-inflation outlier that it isn't.
Inflation by decade, every currency
Annualised, percent a year. Blank where the record does not reach.
| Decade | USD | GBP | EUR | CAD | AUD | JPY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950s (1950-1960) | 2.3% | 4.1% | 2.5% | 6.1% | ||
| 1960s (1960-1970) | 2.6% | 3.8% | 2.7% | 2.5% | ||
| 1970s (1970-1980) | 7.5% | 13.3% | 7.5% | 10.2% | 8.8% | |
| 1980s (1980-1990) | 5.0% | 6.8% | 6.3% | 8.2% | 2.3% | |
| 1990s (1990-2000) | 2.9% | 3.4% | 2.0% | 2.2% | 1.0% | |
| 2000s (2000-2010) | 2.5% | 2.7% | 2.0% | 2.1% | 3.2% | -0.3% |
| 2010s (2010-2020) | 1.8% | 2.9% | 1.3% | 1.7% | 2.1% | 0.6% |
| 2020s (2020-2026) | 3.9% | 5.8% | 3.8% | 3.4% | 3.8% | 2.0% |