Regional Indicator 13: Life Expectancy at Birth

Why It's Important This is a key indicator measuring the overall health of citizens in a jurisdiction. An increasing life expectancy at birth indicates that the overall health status of the population is improving while a decreasing life expectancy indicates a general deterioration in a population's health status. Factors affecting life expectancy include access to health care, diet, environment, wealth and economic development.

Regional Indicator Thirteen is the average number of years that a child is expected to live based on the mortality rates prevailing at the child's birth.

Life expectancy at birth increased throughout the province between 1999 and 2008. Improvements ranged from four months in Kelowna to over two years in Vancouver.

Regional BC had the lowest 2008 life expectancy at 79.9 years while Vancouver had the highest at 82.5. The difference is 2.5 years and is larger than the gain realized by Regional BC over this ten-year period.

Year-to-year decreases in life expectancy at birth are rare and the ones that do occur are usually small or reversed in the following periods. Of the changes in the 1999 through 2008 period, there were no annual decreases in Vancouver or Regional BC while there were two in Abbotsford, three in Kelowna and four in Victoria.