On balance, economic news for Butler and its surrounding counties in recent years has been positive: falling poverty rates, rising media household income and a slow and steady — albeit sometimes frustrating — march out of The Great Recession.

It has been, in large part, a success story that has left very few people feeling successful or secure despite data showing things were improving.

Now data show something different — the already-secure continuing their upward trajectory, while those struggling or on the margins more likely to fall off the pace. That’s based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics released earlier this month for the region, which show poverty rates rising alongside median household income.

Though by no means a spike or a disastrous undoing of the hard-won economic progress of recent years, the worsening of poverty in counties like Butler — which saw a rise from a rate of 6.2 percent in 2016 to 8.1 percent last year, according to the Bureau’s new data — is definitely noteworthy.

As poverty rates were increasing, the county’s median household income ticked up slightly in 2017 to $50,909, according to the new federal estimates. Unemployment stands at 3.8 percent in the county, according to the Bureau.

The good news is that Butler County’s poverty rate is still well below both the region’s 11 percent average, the state’s rate of 12.5 percent and the national rate of 12.3 percent.

Nonetheless, this should make us ask the question: who is being left behind by an economy that boasts some of the lowest unemployment numbers in recent memory, as well as rising earnings for workers?

It’s up to all of us — state and county officials, as well as members of each community — to seek an answer this question rather than settle for federal statistics and national surveys that paint an impersonal portrait of the struggles in which many Americans are engaged.

These struggles don’t pass by small boroughs or rural townships on their way to big cities; they don’t eschew college towns for the former steel hubs of our industrial past; they don’t discriminate: young, old or middle-aged. Poverty is not their problem; it is our problem. Everyone’s problem.

A rising tide lifts all ships? We’d certainly like to think so. But if that’s true, then everyone in a vessel that has floated slowly upward over these past years should want to account for those that never managed to weigh anchor with the rest of us.