It’s almost cliché now: the small 1950s ranch house juxtaposed with a new towering modern home in one of Nashville’s gentrifying neighborhoods.

Shorthand for the city's shifting demographics, the image brings to mind the ‘haves and have-nots,’ the newcomers and old-timers, and the climbing cost of housing.

While the neighborhood disparities are jarring, new Census data shows that the city’s income inequality may actually be on the downtrend as Nashville’s economic surge attracts both higher-paying jobs and rising wages in low-skilled sectors. Indeed, the middle class has been growing in the greater 14-county Nashville metro area, one new study found.

“Nashville stood out among larger Metro areas of having a larger than average middle class,” said Alan Berube, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. “The kinds of industries that have been growing — they pay better than they did before. There seems to be an engine of prosperity in Nashville that’s helping pull the income distribution to the right.”

In 2017, 63.2 percent of the metro area’s households were in the broad middle class, defined as having incomes between $23,000 and $113,000, according to the Brookings analysis of Census data. That’s up from 61.6 percent in 2000.

It represents the seventh-fastest middle-class growth among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. Meanwhile, the share of households in the low-income category dropped.

Those were findings from The Brookings Institution study behind report released this week, "Where does the American middle class live?”

“Typically, the people who move to a metro area have more education, more resources and are part of a national labor market,” Berube said. “But at the same time, Nashville has attracted a lot of low-skilled labor, and a lot of immigrants.”

Those lower-income workers have benefited during the city's redevelopment. The average worker’s wage in the construction industry climbed by 19 percent from 2012 to 2017 in Davidson County, and the leisure and hospitality industry climbed by 16 percent during the same period, according to a Tennessean analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Many of the new Nashville jobs fall into the “middle skills” category, said Nancy Eisenbrandt, the chief talent development officer at the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. They require some education beyond high school, but not a four-year degree.

Since the 1990s, Nashville government and business leaders have focused on attracting jobs in healthcare, corporate headquarters, advanced manufacturing, distribution, and music and entertainment, said Courtney Ross, the chief economic development officer of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The strategy is to both diversify our economy and build those different skill sets that are more attractive to those businesses,” said Ross said.

From the a macro perspective, the economic changes have not had a clear effect on income inequality. Between 2007 and 2017 inequality bumped up and down repeatedly in both the city and the metro area, according to the Gini index published by the Census Bureau. The inequality index has been dropping slightly in both the city and the broader region since 2014, around the start of the latest development boom.

But the measure doesn’t account for gentrification, as higher-income people move to Nashville and displace long-time residents, experts said.

“Migration to Nashville has adversely impacted working-poor Tennesseans and inflated what may appear as a reduction in income inequality,” Sekou Franklin, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said in an email. “Migration — and no substantive affordable housing program — have ... forced many vulnerable residents out of Nashville. Hence, it may appear that Nashville is making progress, when in reality, it is not.”

Economic development leaders are now turning to those marginalized during the region’s boom.

“How do we create resources in the community to support individuals who are on the sidelines of this prosperity?” Eisenbrandt from the Nashville chamber said. “We are very focused on how we build a greater, inclusive prosperity.”

Reach Mike Reicher at mreicher@tennessean.com or 615-259-8228 and on Twitter @mreicher.