On Tuesday, when the Census Bureau released one of the country’s most important reports on income and poverty, dozens of facts were revealed. We found out that real middle-class incomes in America grew a phenomenal 5.2 percent, and that the poverty rate fell by the largest percentage in nearly 50 years.

That got the headlines. But after the initial buzz, a few reporters across the country, me included, were intrigued by two lines in the first table: While incomes in metropolitan areas grew 6 percent, those in nonmetro areas fell 2 percent. That detail prompted articles on how the recovery was unevenly shared.

One problem, though: The number is wrong. Median household incomes in rural America actually grew 3.4 percent in 2015, according to policy experts who study the census numbers closely.

“Rural” has a very narrow meaning to the Census Bureau. Here, we’re using the word for what the bureau would term “nonmetropolitan.”