This paper's contribution to the literature is two-fold. First, it broadens the existing evidence regarding rural workers by focussing on racial and gender differences. Second, it provides new evidence of the structure of wages faced by American Indians, a group typically ignored in empirical research due to data problems.

The results reveal that only 14 percent of the 24 percent total wage difference between Whites and American Indians for males are unexplained by observable personal and job characteristics, but 66 percent of the 11 percent wage difference remains unexplained for females. Comparing Whites and Blacks, 44 percent of the 31 percent wage difference is unexplained for males, while 97 percent of the 15 percent wage difference is unexplained for females. With the rural focus, Whites are more similar to American Indians, both experiencing very small wage returns to education. However, in both samples, Blacks suffer disproportionately severe penalties for low educational attainment. For all three races, females enjoy much higher returns to education than males.