February 10, 2016 - Clients receive food, enough for three days, at the St. Patrick Catholic Church food pantry at 297 S. Fourth. The Shelby County Health Department has completed a study that compares poverty, health, environmental and other factors throughout the county by ZIP code. It found that residents in the combined 38126/38106 ZIP codes have the shortest life expectancy and that it’s 13 years shorter than the 38017 ZIP code, which has the longest life expectancy at 83 years. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal

Metropolitan Memphis shed its status as the nation's poorest large metro area as the local poverty rate fell last year to its lowest level since the recession, census figures released today show.

An estimated 18.4 percent of the metro area's 1.3 million-plus residents were living on less than the federal poverty threshold of $24,250 for a four-member household or $15,930 for two people during 2015, according to estimates from the Census bureau's American Community Survey. That's a drop from the 20.3 percent poverty rate shown in estimates for the previous year and the lowest since the 17.3 percent reported for 2008.

Among the 53 metro areas in the nation with populations of at least 1 million, Memphis — long saddled with the highest rate — dropped to second, supplanted by the Tucson, Arizona, metro area's rate of 18.9 percent, which was unchanged from 2014. The large metro area with the third-highest poverty rate last year was New Orleans, at 18 percent.

Nationwide, 14.7 percent of the population was impoverished last year, down from 15.5 percent in 2014, according to the estimates.

"We're doing better overall, but so is the rest of the country," said Elena Delavega, assistant professor of social work at the University of Memphis.

The poverty reduction was spread across the Memphis area, touching nearly all age and ethnic groups and communities.

In the city of Memphis, the rate dipped from 29.8 percent in 2014 to 26.2 percent last year, while for all of Shelby County the reduction was from 22.9 to 20.1 percent. The racial gap in poverty also closed somewhat, with the rate among African-Americans in the metro area falling from 29.9 to 25.9 percent while among non-Hispanic white residents it dropped from 9.2 to 9.1 percent.

Childhood poverty, long a high-profile problem in the Memphis area, also declined from 30.8 to 28.8 percent as nearly 8,000 fewer kids were poor last year. That rate, however, remained the highest among the 53 large metro areas.

The census figures point to one primary reason for the poverty reduction: more people with jobs. According to the estimates, the number of metro area residents who were working rose from 604,051 in 2014 to 613,009 last year. The number of unemployed residents fell from 59,699 to 52,888.

"This is the result of a slow, steady improvement" from the recession, said David H. Ciscel, professor emeritus of economics at the U of M. "There's nothing dramatic about it."

A critical factor has been the recovery of the Memphis area's usually strong logistics sector, Ciscel said. "It took a big hit during the recession, but it's come back."

The census estimates showed local improvements beyond the reduction in poverty. The percentage of Memphis-area residents without health insurance also dropped to an estimated 12 percent, compared to 13.4 percent in 2014 and 15.7 percent the year before that.