The New York Times ran a feature story on it. President Barack Obama is touting it at Clinton rallies. It’s being shouted from the mountaintops: the poverty rate is down! And it fell by a statistically significant amount.

Setting aside the fact that such statistically significant shifts happen all the time and are often meaningless, we should still welcome this news. The 1.2 percent drop signifies 3.5 million fewer Americans living under the federal poverty line. Food insecurity rates fell along with the poverty rate. Median wages also rose at every income decile.

So some moderate degree of joy is certainly warranted. But once we’ve scratched that particular itch, let’s consider what these statistics actually represent.