The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
Metro San Francisco ranks highest among California’s five most populous metro areas for its standard of living and the health and education measures of residents, according to a just-released report from the American Human Development Project.
The Project’s report, called “A Portrait of California,” is the first attempt to measure the well-being and access to opportunities of residents by region, and it uncovers significant differences between the most well-off and the state’s poorest residents. The Project is producing similar portraits for every state.
San Francisco ranks 6.97 on the Project’s Human Development Index, on which 0 is the lowest and 10 is the highest end of development. Next highest is San Diego at 5.80; Sacramento at 5.66; LA at 5.52 and Riverside-San Bernadino at 4.58.
The report also categorizes California into five profiles, based on the well-being, income and education levels of their residents. Silicon Valley Shangri La is at the top of the list, with a Human Development Index (HDI) score of 9.35 and just 1 percent of the state’s population. At the bottom are what the Project calls the Forgotten Five Percent, who live in the San Joaquin Valley and the poorest enclaves of LA and rate 2.59 on the HDI.
Other interesting findings of the report are the longevity indicators, which show that California as a whole has the highest life expectancy, at 80.1 years, of any state in the country. But that average masks a low of 72.8 years for residents of Watts.
Wide gaps also exist in earning power of the most well-off and the poorest—a $58,000 gap between high earners in Cupertino and low wage workers in LA. Men of all races and ethnicities continue to earn more than women, and Latino women have the lowest average incomes, at $18,000, which the report notes is more like an income from the 1960s.
The purpose of the California portrait is to highlight the state's successes and foster policies that will raise the HDI of those with the fewest opportunities and lowest health and education measures. The Human Development Index was created as an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product that could more accurately gauge the well-being of Americans according to a indicators that are critical to physical, economic and social health. The American Human Development Project is a project of the Social Sciences Research Council.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
