Prince George, B.C.- Progress Prince George has issued a supplemental report to it's  benchmarking report on the City's "progress".  The Social Indicators report measures the trends in six key indicators in the areas of health,education and the environment, comparing the city to the province where possible.

Progress Prince George co-chair Sharon Cochran says this is something they have wanted to do for some time "Measuring the economic indicators has been critical to our work, and we believe that the added tracking of social indicators to the Benchmarking Reports will enhancetheir value as a tool to recruit residents to Prince George.”

The results of the report reveal that while a gap does exist between Prince George and the province as a whole in certain health and education indicators, it is decreasing. The city also showed marked improvement in environmental indicators such as air quality and crime rates in 2007.

The health indicators in the report show that while the infant mortality rate in Prince George is higher than that for BC, it is not significantly higher and has improved in recent years. This measure can be linked to advances in health care, specifically to maternal and infant health. Lifeexpectancy for Prince George has also risen consistently over past decades, narrowing the gap between the city and the province and suggesting improvements in health care and educational levels. “When we look at the facts, we see that Prince George is improving in ways that reallymatter to those who live here, and to potential residents”, said Tim McEwan, President and CEO of Initiatives Prince George. “This reporting tool is essential to developing strategies to build on these improvements.”

In addition to the infant mortality and life expectancy indicators, an appendix to thesupplemental report provides a comparative analysis of potential years of life lost (PYLL), a measure of premature mortality that reflects the relative significance of specific causes of death.The data show that while the rate of deaths due to natural causes has increased in Prince George while remaining stable in BC, rates have declined moderately for cancer-related deaths.

Accidental death rates have also declined in Prince George, significantly narrowing the gap between the city and the province.

The report’s education indicators measure educational attainment and foundation skills results for Prince George and BC. The data reveal that the percentage of the Prince George population with post-secondary credentials has increased steadily in recent years, and that while a slight gap exists between the city and BC for this measure, the percentage of the population with a minimum education level of high school graduation is the same for both. Progress Prince George also benchmarked the city’s progress in foundation skills results for writing and numeracy and found that although the gaps between School District 57 and the province remained mostly unchanged over the last five years, marked improvement was seen for Aboriginal students in most areas.

Progress Prince George also measures air quality and crime rates relative to its own historic values. The data reveals that concentrations of particulate PM 10 in the air declined in 2007 after