The Value of $250 in 1963

Penny Johnson's abortion cost $250. She and her close friends were not able to come up without that amount of money until Baby Houseman obtained the money from her father.

Because of inflation, the value of $250 is about $2,000 in 1917, according to the webpage US Inflation Calculator.

A screen shot of the calculation at US Inflation Calcuator

In 1963, the minimum wage in New York state was $1.15 an hour. In order to accumulate $250 in gross earnings, a person earning that hourly wage would have to work about 217 hours. If the person worked 40 hours a week, he would have to work about 5½ weeks.

Of course, some taxes would be deducted even from a minimum-wage earner's earnings, so we should round the work duration up to about six weeks.

A person earning the minimum wage spends practically all his money on necessary expenses -- housing, food, clothing, transportation, etc. It's not likely that such a person would be able to accumulate $250 even after working full-time through an entire summer.

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Penny probably earned more than minimum wage, however. Let's suppose that she earned three times the minimum wage. Adjusting from the above calculations of the minimum wage, her after-tax earnings would reach $250 in about two weeks.

Penny might not have had much cash available to come up with $250 within a few days by herself, but she should have been able to borrow money some money from Johnny Castle, Billy Kostecki, and other close friends who knew about her pregnancy.

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According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1963-1964 Edition, published by the US Department of Labor, the minimal salary for professional dancers in ballet and other stage productions was about $110 a week. A dancer's work week was considered to be 30 (not 40) hours, so the hourly wage is about $3.70. For rehearsal time, however, the minimal weekly earnings were only about $80 a week, which is about $2.70 an hour.

Based on those statistics, we can suppose that Penny and Johnny surely did not each earn more than $3.45 an hour -- $138 for a 40-hour week -- at Kellerman's. It's likely that they earned somewhat less.

Since their work week as dancers was only 30 hours, Penny had time to earn extra money by selling wigs and other fancy items to the hotel's guests, as depicted in the movie.

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Robbie Gould worked as a waiter at the Kellerman resort hotel. In that status, he earned tips from the restaurant guests. In 1963, restaurants did not have to pay wait staff any wage at all. Many waiters and waitresses earned only their tips.

I am sure that Robbie did not earn more than Penny or Johnny earned. Probably he earned somewhat less.

According to the US Labor Department's Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1963-1964 Edition (page 709), the average wage for waiters and waitresses was about $1 an hour. That wage was supplemented by tips from the customers. The Kellerman restaurant's guests were financially comfortable people who tipped rather well.

At that time, the usual tip was 10%. The website Restauranting Through History gives some examples of restaurant meals.

1961: The Quail, a “Gourmet Roadhouse” in N. Hollywood CA: “Filet Mignon Steak Dinner – 2 for 1 Price, Pay $3.75, 2nd One Free – Soup or Large Salad, Baked Potato, Sour Cream and Chives, Vegetable, Filet Mignon (charbroiled), Bread and Butter.”

At $3.75 for two meals, each meal cost only $1.88. If the Houseman family bought four such meals for their evening dinner, then the total cost was $7.50, and Robbie's tip was 75¢. His tip for the family's much smaller breakfast or lunch would be much smaller.

That website then gives another example:

1962 Le Pavillon, NYC, is considered the best restaurant in America. Daily luncheon special: $7.50 per person.

So, a waiter serving a lunch in the best restaurant in America received a tip of about 75¢ for doing so.

The website then shows the following advertisement for a turkey meal at Howard Johnson's restaurants in 1964. The meal cost $1.49, so the tip would be about 15¢. If the entire Houseman family bought such a meal, then the tip would be 60¢.

I would guess that Robbie's total earnings (wages plus tips) were about 2.5 times the minimum wage -- about $2.90 an hour.

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In general, Penny, Johnny and Robbie each were earning somewhere between $2.90 and $3.40 an hour -- between $116 and $138 calculated for a 40-hour week.

All three of those employees received much of their earnings in cash and so did not pay all the taxes they should have paid.

In general, the $250 cost of Penny's abortion was more than the gross earnings of two weeks for any of those three employees.

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The Kellerman employees surely got a good deal room and board during their summer jobs, but they paid something. They did not live and eat there for free.

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For the Kellerman hotel employees, their summer earnings were their best earnings of the year. None of them wanted to spend a big portion of their summer earnings on an illegal abortion for Penny.

For example, Robbie was doing his waiter job at Kellerman's in order to accumulate money that he would spend as he was attending Yale medical school. He earned enough at Kellerman's that he could have contributed to the payment for Penny's abortion, but he did not want to contribute anything as long as he could get away with it.

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The American Advisors Group website includes a webpage that compares current prices of various goods with the prices in 1963. For example, if you click on the McDonald's "Big Mac" hamburger, you will see that the current price is $3.99 but the 1963 price was only 28¢.

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I write another blog about growing up in Seward, Nebraska. There I published an article titled Paper-Route Economics, detailing my earnings from delivering newspapers every morning from 1961 to 1965. In my article, I calculated that I earned about 20¢ an hour.

In 1965, when I was in eighth grade, I was able to quit my paper-delivery job and go to work washing dishes in the local college's cafeteria. In this new job I earned 60¢ an hour. That was big money for a boy of my wage.