Poverty rates may look worse than they really are in small college towns because of the number of students living off-campus.

The Virginian-Pilot reports.

College towns stricken with poverty? Not exactly.

It’s not the low-wage blacksmiths and brickmakers in Colonial Williamsburg who are driving up the city’s poverty levels. It’s the College of William & Mary.

At least that’s according to a study by the University of Virginia looking at how poverty rates may look worse than they really are in small college towns because of the number of students living off-campus.

Williamsburg’s 20.5 percent poverty rate is well above the national average of 14.8 percent. But it dropped to 11.6 percent when U.Va. researchers removed people enrolled in postsecondary education from the census equation.

The same drop happens in Radford (40 percent down to 15 percent), Harrisonburg (33 percent to 15 percent) and Charlottesville (28 percent to 15 percent).