Search this site:

Private Owner Occupation, Income, and Education

Information about NIPF owner demographics in the South is sketchy. Kluender and Walkingstick (2000), for example, found that >40 percent of Arkansas NIPF owners were retirees. Birch (1996) reported that 29 percent of all southern private timberland owners were white-collar workers. Retirees and blue-collar workers were two other dominant classes. Together, these three classes accounted for 72 percent of all private owners. Retirees and white-collar workers each owned around 20 percent of all private timberlands.

Farmers accounted for only 6 percent of all southern owners and held only about 9 percent of all private timberland. As noted in chapter 16, farmer-owned timberland has been declining for many decades. Fifty years ago, farmers owned about two-thirds of the South’s timberland (chapter 16).

Limited State-level research findings suggest that annual income and educational levels of NIPF owners probably vary considerably, just as they do for people in general. Amacher and others (1998) found that the average annual income of NIPF owners in rural southwestern Virginia was about $48,000. Landowners in the more urbanized, central Virginia region, however, had an average yearly income of >$91,000. The modal subjects of a Florida NIPF study had at least a bachelor’s degree and a household income of >$50,000 annually. Kluender and Walkingstick (2000) found about 18 percent of NIPF owners in Arkansas had not graduated from high school, about 30 percent had graduated from high school, and the remainder either had some college education (25 percent) or were college graduates (26 percent). Almost half of these landowners reported household incomes of at least $35,000 per year, while 28 percent averaged <$20,000 annually (Kluender and Walkingstick 2000). The median annual household income of NIPF minority landowners in two Alabama counties was between $30,000 and $39,999, with two-fifths having incomes of at least $40,000. Four-fifths had at least a high school education (Gan and others 1999).

The large numbers of retiree NIPF owners in the South, as well as other research findings, suggest that many timberland owners are probably between 50 and 60 years old. Hodge (1996) reported that about 50 percent of Virginia NIPF owners were older than 60. Another third were 46 to 60 years old. Virginia landowners studied by Amacher and others (2000) had an average age of 60 years. About 60 percent of new NIPF forest owners in Georgia were older than 55 (Newman and others 1996). Nearly three-quarters of Louisiana NIPF owners enrolled in the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP) ranged from 40 to 69 years old (Lorenzo and Beard 1996). Jacobson (1997) reported the modal subjects of a Florida NIPF study to be between 56 and 75 years old. More than three-quarters of Mississippi NIPF owners who had harvested timber in recent years were found to be at least 50 years of age (Gunter and others 2001). More than two-thirds of minority NIPF landowners in two southeastern Alabama counties were found to be at least 50 years old (Gan and Kollison 1999).