Giving Compass' Take:

• Brookings examines data from the U.S. Census report, finding that, even though poverty in general was lower in 2017, an uneven economy showed that many are still being left behind.

• How can these numbers inform poverty-related outreach programs, making sure that we are not continuing to neglect the areas in the country that are the hardest hit? What methods will make an impact in this area?

• Here's more on why we misunderstand persistent poverty and employment.

The latest Census Bureau numbers on poverty and income, released last week, contained some good news for the nation: median household income increased in 2017, and the national poverty rate edged down 0.4 percentage points to reach 12.3 percent — its lowest level since 2006. The less good news is that those gains were smaller than the year before, and the actual number of people in poverty remained unchanged in 2017.

Similarly, recently released 2017 American Community Survey data also show continued progress against poverty in the nation’s major metro areas (which collectively contain two-thirds of U.S. population), but contain signs that that progress has been uneven.

In 2017, the poverty rate for the nation’s 100 largest metro areas fell to 12.4 percent — a decline of 0.7 percentage points from 2016. That decrease continued the steady progress that began in 2014, when the major-metro poverty rate inched down for the first time post-Great Recession. But this time around, fewer regions shared in that progress. Among individual metro areas, 29 registered statistically significant decreases in their poverty rates in 2017, down from 36 in 2016, and 34 in 2015.

Among those 29 regions, some of the steepest poverty rate decreases occurred in Southern and Midwestern metro areas. Ten metro areas registered statistically significant poverty rate declines of at least 2 percentage points, more than threefold the average major-metro decrease. At the same time, many of these same regions remain home to higher-than-average poverty rates, underscoring that recent progress against poverty has yet to reach many struggling residents in regions like Fresno, Nev., Memphis, Tenn., and Youngstown, Ohio.

Read the full article about places that made progress against poverty by Elizabeth Kneebone at Brookings.