ABSTRACT
Persistent rand poverty is a problem that afflicts some groups more than others. Historically, Hispanic, African-American, and American Indian communities have endured the most intense forms of economic deprivation and its consequences: malnutrition, ill-health, malaise, and violence. Despite the frequently presumed homogeneity of rural America, the social landscape is dotted by a variety of ethnic minority communities. Considering the amount of attention devoted to the problem of urban poverty, it is perplexing that rural poverty seldom attracts much notice. Official poverty rates are consistently higher in rural areas, regardless of race. Dissatisfaction with human capital and status attainment models in the 1970s spurred the development of models explicitly concerned with the impact of social structure and labor market organization. Dual labor market theory is concerned with the effect of labor market organization on worker outcomes. Dual economy theory closely parallels dual labor market theory.
