It was shown that there was a huge increase in Puerto Rican women headed households rather than Mexican or Cubans. All these findings are tied together into higher levels are rural poverty which is a finding that hasn't been noticed often. Most cultural theories of poverty blame the individual on not being able to get out of a culture of failure. However, observers of rural America seem less likely to blame the victim. Surely poverty cannot be explained in a rural area simply because of the individual's choices to drop out of the labor force and form these female-headed families or to collect welfare. Their findings seem to rule out cultural poverty in rural America. The correlation between female employment and poverty suggests the focus on the structural theory of poverty as it must be the structure of our economy causing this problem.
Structural theories of poverty leave more of a blame on the government and the people who choose how the jobs and the economy are structured that puts the people of America into poverty. It's argued from this perspective that people are poor because of racism, sexism, and segregation limit or people are denied certain jobs. Also people in certain parts of the country may have limited access to certain types of jobs. These occurrence of female headed families in rural America makes researchers lean towards the structural theory. Males seem to be having trouble finding a job in rural America and it is surely not because of choice. The industrialization of America has caused the structure of our workforce to have little to no jobs in rural areas. Many of households in rural America are white families whose parent has either a full time or part time job. This is very different than urban poverty which mainly consists of broken up African American households. It is because of this rural poverty is largely overlooked. Even if the mother or father is able to find a job it is not one that pays good money.