Given a column of numbers:
lst = []
cols = ['A']
for a in range(100, 105):
lst.append([a])
df = pd.DataFrame(lst, columns=cols, index=range(5))
df
A
0 100
1 101
2 102
3 103
4 104
You can reference the previous row with shift:
df['Change'] = df.A - df.A.shift(1)
df
A Change
0 100 NaN
1 101 1.0
2 102 1.0
3 103 1.0
4 104 1.0