€100 in 1997 is worth €109.61 in 2002

Buying power of €100 in 1997

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for €100 in 1997 (price index tracking began in 1996).

For example, if you started with €100, you would need to end with €109.61 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When €100 is equivalent to €109.61 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single Euro euro decreases over time. In other words, a euro will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a euro over time. By calculating the value in 1997 dollars, the chart below shows how €100 is worth less over 5 years.

According to the European Central Bank, each of these EUR amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1997 amounts in 2002 euros, based on the 9.61% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for €100, 1997 to 2002

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1997 and 2002:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The Euro CPI was 72.555 in the year 1997 and 79.52583333 in 2002:

€100 in 1997 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as €109.61 in 2002.

To get the total inflation rate for the 5 years between 1997 and 2002, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

Raw data for these calculations comes from the European Commission and the European Central Bank's Harmonized Index of Consumer prices (HICP), which is computed based on the reported consumer price indices in member countries of the European Union.

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