We study Poincaré inequalities and long-time behavior for diffusion processes on R^n under a variable curvature lower bound, in the sense of Bakry-Emery. We derive various estimates on the rate of convergence to equilibrium in L^1 optimal transport distance, as well as bounds on the constant in the Poincaré inequality in several situations of interest, including some where curvature may be negative. In particular, we prove a self-improvement of the Bakry-Emery estimate for Poincaré inequalities when curvature is positive but not constant.