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Taking Goldschmidt to the Woods: Timberland Ownership and Quality of Life in Alabama *
Author(s) -
Bailey Conner,
Gopaul Abhimanyu,
Thomson Ryan,
Gunnoe Andrew
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1111/ruso.12344
Subject(s) - revenue , unemployment , educational attainment , poverty , demographic economics , economic growth , rural area , economics , population , land tenure , business , agricultural economics , public economics , agriculture , geography , finance , sociology , political science , demography , archaeology , law
We use a database of property tax records for 13.6 million acres representing every parcel of privately owned timberland in 48 rural Alabama counties to test two hypotheses inspired by Walter Goldschmidt relating land ownership and quality of life. Our data show private ownership is highly concentrated and 62 percent is absentee owned. We employed Pearson correlations alongside Poisson and negative binomial regression models to estimate influence of both concentrated private ownership and absentee ownership of timberland. Our findings support Goldschmidt‐inspired hypotheses that concentrated and absentee ownership of timberland exhibit a significant adverse relationship with quality of life as measured by educational attainment, poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, eligibility for free or reduced price lunch at public schools, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program participation, and population density. Low property taxes in Alabama limit the ability of local governments to generate revenue to support public education or meet other infrastructural or service needs in rural areas. We call on rural sociologists and kindred spirits to pay more attention to the fundamental importance of land ownership which shapes the foundations of power and inequality affecting rural life in America and beyond.