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  • Sightline Institute

Hate on us Seattleites and our decadent, liberal, urban lifestyles all you want, you Bible-thumping/tea-bagging denizens of Eastern Washington, but according to a new study released today by the Sightline Institute, we'll all be dancing on your graves. You know, metaphorically... and on average.

Life expectancy in the city of Seattle has positively soared over the last couple of decades! Take a look: in the early 1990s, residents of Seattle (the blue line) could expect a shorter average lifespan than the the state as a whole (the pink line). But by 1997, Emerald City life expectancy shot ahead of the state average; and by the middle of the last decade it had even moved ahead of British Columbia. Today, if Seattle were an independent nation, its life expectancy would rank second in the world, just a month behind Japan's.

According to Sightline, part of Seattle's surge in life expectancy is certainly attributable the dramatic drop in HIV mortality during the 1990's, and some of it is likely due to rising incomes and declining poverty rates. But what explains the rather stark, three-year difference between average life expectancy in Seattle and that in the state as a whole?

Surely it can't have anything to do with our progressive/liberal/socialist values and policies, can it? So perhaps God simply loves Seattleites more than he does folks in the less healthy parts of the state?