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.

中文翻译：

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将戈尔施密特带到树林：阿拉巴马州的林地所有权和生活质量*

我们使用一个1360万英亩的财产税记录数据库，代表阿拉巴马州48个县的每个私有林地，来检验沃尔特·戈德施密特（Walter Goldschmidt）启发的关于土地所有权和生活质量的两个假设。我们的数据显示，私有制高度集中，并且62％的人缺席。我们将Pearson相关性与Poisson和负二项式回归模型一起使用，以估计林地集中私人所有权和缺席所有权的影响。我们的发现支持Goldschmidt启发的假说，即对林地的集中和缺席所有权与生活质量有着显着的不利关系，这可以通过教育程度，贫困，失业，粮食不安全，在公立学校获得免费或减价午餐的资格来衡量，补充营养援助计划的参与和人口密度。阿拉巴马州较低的财产税限制了地方政府创收收入以支持公共教育或满足农村地区其他基础设施或服务需求的能力。我们呼吁农村社会学家和有志之士更加关注土地所有权的根本重要性，因为土地所有权塑造了影响美国及其他地区农村生活的权力和不平等的基础。