Sam Podnar

March 13, 2023

 Every summer, my family makes a pilgrimage to my grandparents’ house in Logan, West Virginia. Our journey takes us from the edge of the Rust Belt south through the interior of the Mountain State, a trek long enough to warrant multiple stops at identical rest stations featuring broken hand dryers and pamphlets about cave tours, but short enough that we can power through without a break for lunch.

We travel through the heart of Appalachia, a region whose peculiar nature I could sense from the earliest of my family’s trips to West Virginia’s southern border. The highway takes us through the Pittsburgh coal seam, which has produced 13 billion tons of coal over the last two centuries and is considered the world’s most valuable mineral deposit.[i] The unfurling railroad tracks across the nation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries enabled entrepreneurs to reach into the coalfields and forests of Appalachia and extract the region’s precious resources. As mining operations expanded to meet the fervent demand for coal, hundreds of thousands of workers flocked to western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, creating a regional economy that fueled the nation’s post-Civil War industrial revolution. It once supplied two-thirds of the nation’s coal, peaking during the coal boom of the two world wars.[ii]

But today, the region suffers from some of the worst outcomes in poverty, unemployment, education, and health in the country. Appalachia’s median household income stands at $10,000 less than the national average, and a deep pocket of poverty runs through southern West Virginia and northeastern Kentucky, alongside some of the nation’s highest rates of opioid addiction.[iii] Poverty rates reach upwards of 40 percent in some counties, and the region’s life expectancy is two-and-a-half years lower than the national average.[iv] Though Appalachia sits on an enormous amount of wealth, its population remains near-paralyzed in a quality of life markedly worse than most other regions in the country. What is at the core of the paradox threading through the enigmatic mountains and valleys of America’s eastern heartland?

The puzzle of Appalachia is not unfamiliar to scholars who have spent time studying colonialism’s persistent impacts on today’s world. It bears a striking resemblance to an issue faced by developing countries rich in natural resources but facing worse economic growth and development outcomes—a dilemma known as the “resource curse.” Scholars have proposed that this paradox could be attributed to the failure of these countries to manage their riches effectively, neglecting to build strong institutions that promote development and economic growth, pursue economic diversification, or develop a sufficient stock of human capital.[v] But in studying the global phenomenon’s analogue at home, some have posited that the plight of Appalachia can be attributed not to failures on the part of the residents themselves but to exploitation that drains the region of its wealth and funnels it into corporate hands.

The more robust the presence of the coal industry in a given county, the worse its economic outcomes. Per capita income is lower on average in coal-producing counties in Appalachia than their counterparts that do not host the coal industry. One group of researchers also found that higher coal revenues in a county is correlated with a decrease in income growth rates.[vi] Areas with the heaviest mining have fared worse than both their non-mining counterparts and the nation in several socioeconomic indicators; data collected between 1979 and 2005 reveals employment and poverty rates for counties with above average levels of coal mining two percentage points higher than for non-mining counties.[vii]

Additionally, Appalachia has staggering rates of absentee land ownership, which occurs when individuals or corporations own but do not occupy or actively manage a piece of land. This causes the wealth generated by the coal fields to flow out of the region to externally located corporations. Since the mechanization of the mining industry cut jobs and forced many people to move out of mining counties, most of the land is in the hands of land-management companies, some of them based in foreign countries. A landmark 1981 study found that, among the counties surveyed, 43 percent of the land and 70 percent of the mineral rights belonged to absentee owners.[viii] An updated 2013 report revealed that the concentration of corporate ownership had since declined, but remained significant; the same report identified West Virginia’s Wyoming County as the state’s most corporate-owned, with just two companies holding over half of the county’s private land.[ix]

99 percent of Appalachia’s residents control less than half of the land, a fact with devastating ramifications.[x] Because the land rarely goes on the market, and thus, its value is rarely reassessed, absentee landowners fail to pay their fair share of property taxes on artificially undervalued land, creating an atrophied local tax base that leaves these communities dependent on state and federal funding.[xi] A lack of local capital makes economic diversification, development, and investment in human capital extremely difficult, with the counties producing the greatest wealth suffering the poorest outcomes in education, social services, infrastructure, and public utilities.[xii] The natural capital that should enrich the region is converted into financial capital and exported out of the community, to the detriment of the residents who are left with weak local government and crumbling public services.

This phenomenon challenges the notion that Appalachia’s poverty is the result of underdevelopment or the simple fact of being “passed over” as the rest of the country has become enriched. Rather than a region existing outside the story of national development, Appalachia has been an integral piece of America’s prosperity, with its abundance of natural resources fueling its industrial development. This aligns with Andre Gunder Frank’s “dependency theory,” which posits that Western nations left their colonies deliberately underdeveloped so they could extract from them cheap raw materials and labor to fuel their own growth.[xiii] The exploitative relationship that upholds the global capitalist system is mirrored in Appalachia’s paradox of plenty—a situation indicative not of the region’s need to “catch up” to the rest of the country, but of the rest of the country’s history of bleeding Appalachia dry for its own gain.

This sheds a new light on the reasons for the popularity of Donald Trump’s politics in Appalachia. Historically a predominantly Democratic region, it has generally been shunned from mainstream politics since the days of the New Deal and War on Poverty—until a newcomer arrived on the national stage in 2016 and promised to revive the coal industry and the jobs that it once supported.[xiv] Liberals often criticize voters in Appalachia and other impoverished rural regions for “voting against their interests,” but it is not difficult to understand why a population living under constant exploitation would be eager to support a figure who promises to return their wealth to them.

Scholar John Gaventa further argues that examinations of national voting behavior miss the region’s strong history of resistance to exploitative forces, especially in the form of organized labor movements. A 2018 strike by West Virginia teachers created waves across the country, for example, and community organizing groups like the Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth advocate against destructive mining practices, an unfair taxation structure, and the transition away from coal. Some communities have even seen a direct counter to absentee land ownership in the creation of community land trusts and housing.[xv]

Viewing the plight of Appalachia parallel to that of formerly colonized developing nations will enable scholars and policymakers to see how historical patterns of exploitation by dominant powers are perpetuated and to look for possible remedies being pursued outside of the U.S. It also deconstructs the popular narrative that Appalachia suffers because of a “backwards” culture or apathy towards politics or social change, connecting it to a broader struggle for liberation from systems of capitalist oppression.

At the center of this issue is the importance of returning agency and the chance for prosperity to the residents of Appalachia. Efforts should be made to return land to local hands, and at the very least, to ensure that absentee landowners are paying their fair share of property taxes. Strengthening the region’s public education system should be prioritized to build up the stock of human capital that can make integration into a national service-based economy more viable. Ultimately, community-centered development focused on promoting the well-being of residents should be prioritized to promote reductions in poverty and better outcomes in health and employment.

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Image via Pexels Free Photos.

[i] Abramson, Rudy. “Bituminous Coal Industry.” University of Tennessee Press, 2006.

[ii] Drake, Richard. A History of Appalachia. University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

[iii] “Income and Poverty in Appalachia.” Appalachian Regional Commission, arc.gov/income-and-poverty-in-appalachia/

“Poverty Rates in Appalachia, 2013-2017.” Appalachian Regional Commission, arc.gov/map/poverty-rates-in-appalachia-2013-2017/

[iv] “Poverty Rates in Appalachia, 2013-2017.” Appalachian Regional Commission, arc.gov/map/poverty-rates-in-appalachia-2013-2017/

Knopf, Taylor. “Life Expectancy Gap Widens for Appalachia.” North Carolina Health News, 30 August 2017, https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2017/08/30/life-expectancy-gap-widens-appalachia/

[v] Smith, Benjamin and David Waldner. Rethinking the Resource Curse. Cambridge University Press, 2021, cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/rethinking-the-resource-curse/98A68DF4E64A08EE1BCCA3099A49118F

[vi] Douglas, Stratford and Anne Walker. Coal Mining and the Resource Curse in the Eastern United States. West Virginia University, 18 August 2015, web.archive.org/web/20160603173931/http://be.wvu.edu/phd_economics/pdf/14-01.pdf

[vii] Ahern, Melissa and Michael Hendryx. Mortality in Appalachian Coal Mining Regions: The Value of Statistical Life Lost. Public Health Reports, 2009, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693168/

[viii] Franklin, Ben. “Appalachian Regional Study Finds Absentee Ownership of 43% of Land.” The New York Times, 5 April 1981, nytimes.com/1981/04/05/us/appalachian-regional-study-finds-absentee-ownership-of-43-of-land.html?searchResultPosition=1

[ix] Payne, Elizabeth. “Owning the Mountains: Appalachia’s history of corporate control.” The Appalachian Voice, 2016, appvoices.org/2016/02/18/corporate-land-ownership-appalachia/

[x] Smith, Evan. “Human Rights in the Appalachian Region of the United States of America: an introduction.” UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog, 13 October 2020, sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2020/10/13/human-rights-in-the-appalachian-region-of-the-united-states-of-america-an-introduction/

[xi] Payne, Elizabeth. “Owning the Mountains: Appalachia’s history of corporate control.” The Appalachian Voice, 2016, appvoices.org/2016/02/18/corporate-land-ownership-appalachia/

[xii] Bingham, Ed. Who Owns Appalachia? Land Ownership and Its Impact. The University of North Carolina Press, May 1984, muse.jhu.edu/article/429446

[xiii] ”Andre Gunder Frank.” The BIG Thinkers, ncca.ie/media/2831/andre-gunder-frank.pdf

[xiv] Gaventa, John. Power and powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley—revisited. Taylor & Francis Online, 7 May 2019, tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1584192

[xv] Gaventa, John. Power and powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley—revisited. Taylor & Francis Online, 7 May 2019, tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1584192