Bryan-College Station rank high for poverty, experts explain why

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Two popular reports right now seemingly show Bryan-College Station has one of the happiest workforces in the nation, but at the same time one of the lowest paid workforces in the nation.

Experts spoke with KBTX about how these types of reports might not show the whole story.

According to Glassdoor.com, Bryan-College Station residents are the fourth happiest with their company. This report also includes the average salary for the area, $43,118 which is the lowest on the list of 25 cities across the nation.

But, this came out just weeks before the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey showed Bryan-College Station has the seventh highest poverty rate in the country.

Dennis Jansen, an A&M Professor and Director of the Private Enterprise Research Center, said those reports may not show the whole truth.

“I always look at the studies and take them with a grain of salt. I’m always a little bit careful and looking at what they’re claiming for their data sources. And so I always want to take that into account when I’m judging how much I want to pay attention to these surveys,” he said.

While he says the U.S Census will typically be the most scientific data, it still depends on who is interpreting it. Especially, when you live in an area like Bryan-College Station.

“[Students] are poor according to the U.S. Census, that’s the official definition,” he said.

Which is exactly what he wrote about back in 2019. This is when Bryan-College Station was named #1 for the highest poverty in the U.S.

“Part of the reason we wrote this article was to say that the official definition, while it may have served its purpose, in many respects when you look at college towns it’s misleading. At least, misleading to compare a college town to a non-college town.”

At the time, numbers were being thrown out showing almost 30% of our population lived in poverty.

“We had a poverty rate of I think 28%. But if you exclude students from this poverty, right, it’s like 15% and the state of Texas is 14.5%. So we’re still a tad above the statewide average, but nobody would be writing papers and headlines if the poverty rate was 15% versus 14.5%, instead of 28%,” he said.

Jansen also pointed out that many towns on both lists are also college towns. Ann Arbor, MI with the University of Michigan, Gaineville, FL with the University of Florida, Fayetteville, AR with the University of Arkansas and Provo, UT which is the home of BYU.

While Bryan-College Station does see slightly lower pay than the national average, Jansen says it’s nowhere near low enough to put the community at the top of those lists.

“It’s not that I don’t trust the statistics. I don’t trust the inference people are drawing from those statistics, so I’d be very careful about that,” he said.