The city’s overall poverty rate is 26 percent. Without students who live off campus, the rate drops to 23 percent — the highest among the college towns Rorem and Juday highlighted and the 10th highest in the state.

The researchers say removing post-secondary students produces data that more clearly reflect the extent of poverty in Virginia towns. And it’s important to make the distinction, they say, because financial struggles among students often differ from those who suffer from “intergenerational poverty.”

Juday said students may not require the same kind of services that families in intergenerational poverty need, such as food stamps or housing subsidies.

Hayley Pottle, a sophomore mass communications student at Virginia Commonwealth University, said poverty is an issue for some of her friends, and she sees its effects firsthand as a volunteer for RamPantry, a food pantry that opened in 2013 at VCU for students, faculty and staff.

About 1,260 people visited the pantry last semester.

Pottle said calculating true poverty rates might be more complex because each student has a different set of circumstances.