$5 in 1878 is worth $125.61 in 2018

Buying power of $5 in 1878

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for $5 in 1878 (price index tracking began in 1635).

For example, if you started with $5, you would need to end with $125.61 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When $5 is equivalent to $125.61 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single U.S. dollar decreases over time. In other words, a dollar will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a dollar over time. By calculating the value in 1878 dollars, the chart below shows how $5 is worth less over 140 years.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, each of these USD amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1878 amounts in 2018 dollars, based on the 2,412.30% change in prices:

Inflation by Country

Inflation can also vary widely by country. For comparison, in the UK £5.00 in 1878 would be equivalent to £581.01 in 2018, an absolute change of £576.01 and a cumulative change of 11,520.23%.

Compare these numbers to the US's overall absolute change of $120.61 and total percent change of 2,412.30%.

Inflation by Spending Category

CPI is the weighted combination of many categories of spending that are tracked by the government. Breaking down these categories helps explain the main drivers behind price changes.

This chart shows the average rate of inflation for select CPI categories between 1878 and 2018.

Compare these values to the overall average of 2.33% per year:

The graph below compares inflation in categories of goods over time. Click on a category such as "Food" to toggle it on or off:

For all these visualizations, it's important to note that not all categories may have been tracked since 1878. This table and charts use the earliest available data for each category.

How to calculate inflation rate for $5, 1878 to 2018

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1878 and 2018:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The U.S. CPI was 10 in the year 1878 and 251.23 in 2018:

$5 in 1878 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as $125.61 in 2018.

To get the total inflation rate for the 140 years between 1878 and 2018, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Comparison to S&P 500 Index

The average inflation rate of 2.33% has a compounding effect between 1878 and 2018. As noted above, this yearly inflation rate compounds to produce an overall price difference of 2,412.30% over 140 years.

To help put this inflation into perspective, if we had invested $5 in the S&P 500 index in 1878, our investment would be nominally worth approximately $1,505,852.84 in 2018. This is a return on investment of 30,116,956.73%, with an absolute return of $1,505,847.84 on top of the original $5.

These numbers are not inflation adjusted, so they are considered nominal. In order to evaluate the real return on our investment, we must calculate the return with inflation taken into account.

The compounding effect of inflation would account for 96.02% of returns ($1,445,913.62) during this period. This means the inflation-adjusted real return of our $5 investment is $59,934.21. You may also want to account for capital gains tax, which would take your real return down to around $50,944 for most people.

Information displayed above may differ slightly from other S&P 500 calculators. Minor discrepancies can occur because we use the latest CPI data for inflation, annualized inflation numbers for previous years, and we compute S&P price and dividends from January of 1878 to latest available data for 2018 using average monthly close price.

For more details on the S&P 500 between 1878 and 2018, see the stock market returns calculator.

Data source & citation

Raw data for these calculations comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI), established in 1913. Price index data from 1774 to 1912 is sourced from a historical study conducted by political science professor Robert Sahr at Oregon State University and from the American Antiquarian Society. Price index data from 1634 to 1773 is from the American Antiquarian Society, using British pound equivalents.

» Read more about inflation and investment.