Trend at a glance
The people of Cascadia are living longer than ever before--a sign of robust and improving health.
Cascadians' lifespans have grown to 80.1 years, making health the best performing of the Scorecard's indicators.
If recent improvements continue, Cascadia can reach the Scorecard target in as little as 7 years.
To improve health over the long term, Northwest jurisdictions can focus not just on medical care,
but on preventing illness and injury from occurring in the first place.
Designing neighborhoods for safety and exercise, ensuring broad access to safe and healthful food,
and recognizing the role of income inequality on public health can set the stage for continued improvements in northwesterners' longevity.
Updated June 2010.
(Click for more information on Sightline's health research.)
More about health
What the health indicator measures and why
The Cascadia Scorecard measures health through life expectancy, the average number of
years a newborn can expect to live, given current patterns of mortality.
Life expectancy is the best single gauge of a population's health.
Read more 
That's because the life-expectancy measure integrates all maladies that can shorten lives,
from infant mortality to heart disease to traffic accidents to cancer.
Moreover, national and international comparisons show strong correlations between
life expectancy and other measures of health, such as the number of years people live
free of disability, rates of preventable illness,
and even people's satisfaction with their own health.
Life expectancy is measured consistently throughout the world, and official figures are reported with minimal delay--making
it ideally suited for reliable comparisons of population health.
Read less 
The target and why it was chosen
The life-expectancy target for the Scorecard's health indicator is 81.3 years.
That was the life expectancy of Japan, the world's leader in longevity, when the Scorecard was launched.
Read more
But even as Cascadian lifespans have increased, the goalposts have moved.
Between 2001 and 2008, Japanese life expectancy increased by more than a year.
Today, a baby born in Japan can expect to live past 82 years and 8 months.
Clearly, there would be room for further improvement even if Cascadia's life expectancy were to reach the Scorecard target.
(Click to read about how the Scorecard works, including how targets are chosen.)
Read less
Long-term trends
Life expectancy has grown slowly but steadily for decades in Cascadia.
At the beginning of the twentieth century,
a newborn Cascadian baby could expect to reach the age of about 50.
By the dawn of the twenty-first, average lifespans had stretched to nearly 79 years.
Read more
That was more growth in life expectancy in a single century than in all of prior human history.
And the lengthening of lifespans shows little sign of abating. Average lifespans in the region increased
by nearly two years over the last decade alone, as the toll from virtually every major cause of death declined.
Read less
The results in detail
Health trends have been uneven within Cascadia. British Columbia has long been the
healthiest jurisdiction in the region.
(Click for chart of regional life expectancy trends.)
Read more
BC residents can expect 82.1 years of life on average, topping all other North American states and provinces--and
even surpassing the Scorecard target.
(In future updates of the Scorecard, Sightline may recalibrate the life expectancy target
to reflect the substantial health improvements, both regionally and worldwide, since the Scorecard was first launched.)
But other parts of the world are making progress as fast, or even faster, than British Columbia.
Based on data from 2007, the most recent year for which consistent figures are available,
the province would have ranked fourth in the world in life expectancy, tied with Australia, if it were an independent nation.
But the province's rank has actually fallen: based on previous years' results, the province would have ranked second in the world, trailing only Japan.
(Click for table of international life expectancy.)
Within British Columbia, the healthiest areas are in the south.
(Click for map of life expectancy within Cascadia.)
The healthiest jurisdiction in British Columbia--and in Cascadia overall--is the suburban city of Richmond, BC,
where lifespans exceed 84 years. That's higher than in Japan, and also higher than those of any major county in the United States.
Jurisdictions within the Northwest states don't fare as well.
The Northwest counties with the longest lifespans--Washington County, Oregon, and King County, Washington -- aren't even standouts among populous US counties.
British Columbians' success in leading long, healthy lives results not from one single cause, but from many.
None of the province's inhabitants goes without health insurance--unlike the one in seven residents of the Northwest states who do so currently (though recent changes in US health policy promise to narrow that gap).
BC also has lower rates of violent deaths: fewer homicides and also fewer fatal car crashes, the latter largely due to compact communities that allow residents to drive less.
Even economics may play a role.
On average, residents of the province aren't as wealthy as their American counterparts,
but the income and wealth gaps between the rich and the poor are narrower.
Around the world, an unequal economic structure tends to be associated with poor health.
Other factors, including lower rates of severe obesity compared with the Northwest states, may also play a role.
The recent efforts by the US government to improve access to health care may bear fruit in the years to come,
improving lifespans for residents of the Northwest states.
But access to medical care is only part of the solution to a healthier population.
Just as important are more systemic changes that keep us healthy without medical intervention.
Redesigning our neighborhoods so that we can walk more and drive less, for example, would help promote regular exercise, limit deaths and injuries from car crashes, and reduce air pollution.
Similarly, taking steps to reduce poverty could alleviate economic and social strains that contribute to poor health.
Read less
Life expectancy in Cascadia
Regional life expectancy trends
Life expectancy,
by nation
