Revisiting Quebec's Quiet Revolution: A Synthetic Control Analysis

Vincent Geloso, Chandler S. Reilly (2025). Canadian Journal of Economics 58(2): 548–579

Journal (DOI) · Markdown

Abstract

The year 1960 is often presented as a break year in the economic history of Quebec and Canada. It is used to mark the beginning of the “Quiet Revolution” during which Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec underwent rapid socio-economic change in the form of rapid economic convergence with the rest of Canada and the emergence of a more expansive state (more so than in the rest of Canada). Using synthetic control methods, we analyze whether 1960 is associated with a departure from previous developments. With regards to GDP per capita, GDP per worker, household-size adjusted income, real wages and enrolment rates in primary and secondary schools, we find that 1960 was not an important date. For all macroeconomic indicators and enrolment rates, the counterfactual scenarios do not significantly differ from the actual data. For life expectancy at birth and completed schooling outcomes by schooling cohorts, we find that 1960 did mark a significant departure—albeit a modest one. We also find signs that size of government changed markedly after 1960. Shifting to other methods such as panel approach or time series strategy do not alter these results.

Résumé. Retour sur la Révolution tranquille au Québec : une analyse de contrôle synthétique. On parle souvent de l’année 1960 comme d’une année de rupture dans l’histoire économique du Québec et du Canada. On l’utilise pour marquer le commencement de la « Révolution tranquille », au cours de laquelle la province francophone du Québec a connu des changements socio-économiques fulgurants sous la forme d’une convergence économique rapide avec le reste du Canada et de l’émergence d’un État plus expansif (davantage que dans le reste du Canada). Grâce à des méthodes de contrôle synthétique, nous analysons le lien possible entre l’année 1960 et une rupture par rapport aux développements précédents. En ce qui concerne le PIB par habitant, le PIB par travailleur, le revenu corrigé en fonction de la taille du ménage, les salaires réels et les taux d’inscription dans les écoles primaires et secondaires, nous constatons que 1960 n’a pas été une date importante. Pour tous les indicateurs macroéconomiques et les taux d’inscription, les scénarios contrefactuels ne diffèrent pas considérablement des données réelles. En ce qui concerne l’espérance de vie à la naissance et la diplomation par cohortes scolaires, nous constatons que 1960 a marqué un changement notable, bien que modeste. Nous trouvons également des signes indiquant que la taille du gouvernement a sensiblement changé après 1960. Le passage à d’autres méthodes comme l’approche par panel ou la stratégie des séries chronologiques ne modifie pas ces résultats.

JEL classification: N32, H41, D72, L51

1. Introduction

Writing about changes in Quebec that took place during the 1960s and 1970s, sociologist Hubert Guindon wrote that “centuries—not decades—separate the Quebec of the 1980s from the Quebec of the 1950s” (Guindon 1988, p. 138). The predominantly French population of Quebec had long been one of the poorest in Canada (Raynauld 1961, Inwood and Irwin 2002, Geloso and Macera 2020, Dean and Geloso 2022) and North America (Altman 2003, Geloso 2019, Geloso 2022a). Its government had also been quite small in contrast to other provincial governments (Dupré 1988, Gow 1986, Vaillancourt 1988). By 1980, it is argued that Quebec had converged rapidly towards the rest of Canada in terms of living standards and its government became one of the largest and most proactive of all provincial governments (see Caldwell and Czarnocki 1977, Fortin 1978, Langlois 1992 for a discussion). While all provincial governments in Canada expanded their involvement in social and economic matters after 1960, Quebec expanded faster to far higher levels than all others (Haddow 2015). Simultaneously, living standards in Quebec (across multiple dimensions) improved faster than elsewhere in Canada. These changes, starting in 1960, were grouped under the nickname of the “Quiet Revolution” as a result to a quip made by the Quebec premier Jean Lesage about reforms he was enacting.

However, like any attempt to segment history into clearly delineated periods using break dates (Le Goff 2015), the date of 1960 has been heavily contested. Many scholars pushed back, arguing that Quebec was already converging towards the rest of Canada during the 1950s and that the changes in living standards during the 1960s and 1970s were either a continuation or even a mild reversal (Caldwell and Czarnocki 1977, Migué 1998, Paquet 1999, Migué and Bélanger 2007, Lemay 2016). Some even point out that the Quebec government was already showing signs of modernization and expansion pre-1960 (Paquet 1999). Others have shifted the date of the convergence to the 1940s due to reforms to the educational system (Geloso 2013, 2017; Dean and Geloso 2022; Gagnon et al. 2022).¹ Others criticized these claims, advancing either some rebuttal data (Fortin 2001, 2010, 2011; Fortin 2022), or dismissed them as the works of “reactionaries” against statism (Montpetit and Rouillard 2001, Paquin and Rioux 2022, Fortin 2022). In fact, with the exception of a few contributors who did so in an indirect manner (Dean and Geloso 2022, Gagnon et al. 2022), no econometric efforts have been employed to adjudicate the different claims.

In this paper, we provide the first direct estimate of whether 1960 was a break date. To do so, we rely on synthetic control methods applied on eight different indicators: GDP per worker, GDP per capita, size-adjusted household income, real wages, life expectancy at birth, enrolment rates in primary and secondary schools, schooling achievements by schooling cohorts and government spending as a share of GDP. The choice of method is ideal for the question. A synthetic control method creates a counterfactual Quebec (i.e., without the Quiet Revolution, which we will henceforth refer to as the “synthetic Quebec”) using a weighted average of the other provinces determined by outcomes and other control variables prior to 1960. This synthetic Quebec is then used to estimate how outcomes in Quebec would have evolved absent the Quiet Revolution. The difference between the observed outcomes in Quebec and the counterfactual can be considered as the causal effects of the onset of the Quiet Revolution. Given that debates over the Quiet Revolution always centre on comparisons with other provinces, the donor pool made up of the other provinces is ideal for our purposes. More precisely, this set-up answers the question of whether Quebec’s greater government involvement in social and economic matters relative to the rest of Canada yielded outcomes that differed from those of the rest of Canada.²

Finally, our results for the size of government are the only consistently large and statistically significant effects. There was substantial growth in the size of Quebec’s government after the Quiet Revolution. This, we argue, is unsurprising. The Quiet Revolution is often heralded because Quebec expanded its welfare state and its involvement in economic activity faster and harder than the rest of Canada. Finding this confirms a key statement in Quebec’s historiography. This “extra involvement” (relative to the rest of Canada), however, appears to have yielded modest results. The four measures of material living standards (GDP per worker, GDP per capita and size-adjusted household income, real wages) all show that the synthetic Quebec modestly overperformed relative to the actual data. However, these differences are not statistically significant suggesting that the Quiet Revolution did not significantly alter the pace of convergence towards the rest of Canada. The same is true for enrolment rates in schools. The results based on life expectancy at birth suggest that improvements were faster after the Quiet Revolution and these estimates are statistically significant in most years. However, the improvements in life expectancy are minor, the estimated net gain in life expectancy for Quebec is less than half a year. On the other hand, we do find clear signs that schooling outcomes by schooling cohorts changed markedly after 1960. The effects are significant.

To speak to robustness, we also attempted to replicate our results with different methods. One was to rely on the time series approach of Harvey and Thiele (2020), which was designed to deal with potential issues raised by co-integration. The other was a panel data approach (as in Hsiao et al. 2012 and Bai et al. 2014). Both alternative methods are conceptually different than synthetic control but yield the same pattern of results. In fact, they suggest that only the size of government might have been affected. Presenting the synthetic control methods is thus presenting the best case for the Quiet Revolution’s effects on socio-economic outcomes.³ However, for the sake of brevity and because they are nearly identical, we discuss only the results from these alternatives in the text and refer the reader to the supplementary material for the full results.

Overall, these are important results. They suggest that it is correct to state that the state’s activities expanded rapidly in 1960. We connect this result qualitatively and quantitatively to the rise of federal transfers in helping fund social spending in Quebec. They also suggest that this expansion of the state did not yield the fruits that many claim it did. At best, it did not speed up changes already underway except very modestly for a few indicators. This finding is consistent not only with regional convergence in growth theory but also with recent empirical findings about living standards in Quebec pre-1960.⁴

Our paper is divided as follows. Section 2 explains the dividing lines of the debates on the Quiet Revolution. Section 3 explains our choice of method and the alternative methods for robustness. Section 4 presents and discusses our results. Section 5 concludes.

2. The Quiet Revolution

The origins of Quebec’s longstanding relative poverty within Canada and North America have been long debated amongst many scholars. Some blame long-standing cultural mentalities, others emphasize the long-lasting legacy of the British conquest of Quebec in 1763 or the predominant role of the Catholic clergy over education. Regardless of which of these causes one believes to be true, all agree that the gap in living standards began to shrink in the post-WW II era. However, the dating is different. One group (Migué 1998, Paquet 1999, Lemay 2016, Geloso 2017) believes that the convergence process was underway by 1945. The other believes that 1960—with the onset of the Quiet Revolution—is the crucial date (see, for example, Fortin 2001, 2011; Fortin 2022; Polèse 2021; Montpetit and Rouillard 2001; Paquin and Rioux 2022).

The division of dating is not trivial—it follows very different narratives regarding convergence. The latter group tends to be associated with social–democratic tendencies. The onset of the Quiet Revolution marked the beginning of an entirely new state philosophy. Prior to 1960, Quebec’s government is depicted as laissez-faire or largely conservative—even by Canadian standards (Boismenu 1981; Gow 1986; Vaillancourt 1988; Dupré 1988, 1993).⁵ Whereas other provinces had adopted universal healthcare programs or undertaken large expansion of public education in the 1940s and 1950s, Quebec left the Catholic church in charge of the provision of both services (with minimal subsidies) (Guérard 1996, Cadotte and Meunier 2011, Doray and Lessard 2016). The quality of these services, it is argued, left much to be desired. For example, French Canadians in the province had levels of schooling comparable to African-Americans enduring segregation in the US South (Fortin 2011, p. 98), while life expectancy barely exceeded that of African-Americans (Piché and Bourdais 2003, Geloso 2017). Finally, business was generally conducted in English by non-francophones who generally dismissed and economically marginalized the French majority (Bélanger and Fournier 1987, Roby 1976). Most important was the fact that the “commanding heights” of the economy (e.g., electrical utilities, finance and insurance) were owned by English-speakers (Jobin 1978, Hogue et al. 1979, Bellavance 2003).

The Quiet Revolution marked a radical departure (Bouchard 2005). First, the provincial government created multiple institutions to intervene more actively in the economy. To be sure, other Canadian provinces undertook the same turn, but Quebec went at it faster and harder. It nationalized the hydro-electric industry, representing more than 4% of total economic activity in the province, and tended to offer management positions to francophones (Bellavance et al. 1999). It created the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec to manage all governments funds—including the equivalent of social security in Quebec. Again, francophones were offered key management position within the new entity, which was also entrusted—alongside other state investment bodies like the Société générale de financement—to direct funds for the development of Quebec businesses (i.e., owned by francophones) (Brooks and Tanguay 1985). Second, it rapidly expanded public education (at all levels), reformed educational programs and took over from the Church for the provision of educational services. Third, it also took over from the Church in terms of the provision of health services and introduced (gradually between 1960 and 1970) universal health care. Essentially, Quebec took the most aggressive turn of all Canadian provinces in terms of government involvement in the economy. As a result, this group emphasizes not only that Quebec as a whole grew faster but that the living standards of francophones increased even faster as they gained control—via the state—of the economy (Breton 1964).

The former group, on the other hand, is more skeptical of this ramping up of state activities as a key determinant. First, they tend to emphasize that reforms earlier in the 1940s—notably compulsory education—were more important than those of the 1940s in terms of creating the convergence (Gagnon et al. 2022, Geloso 2017, Dean and Geloso 2021). Second, they point out that Quebec’s government was not particularly different from the rest of Canada in terms of involvement in economic activity (Armstrong 1984, Paquet 1999).⁶ The depiction of an exceptionally non-interventionist state is dismissed. Third, they tend to emphasize that the benefits of the reforms post-1960 are overblown and could even be negative. Indeed, these scholars tend to rely heavily on public choice theory and rent-seeking theory to argue that the rise of the interventionist state created a group of rent-seeking firms that used the state to secure their interests (Smith 1994; Palda 1994; Paquet 1999; Migué 1998, 2001; Bélanger 2007; Boyer and Elgrably-Lévy 2014; Geloso 2017).⁷ However, they differ as to whether the Quiet Revolution was on net beneficial. Some state that the Revolution slowed down convergence, others state the absence of any net benefits and some state small benefits.⁸

The debate between the two camps has been contentious. Because the common denominator in the second group has often been argued to be a classically liberal (or conservative) worldview, some proponents in the first group argue that they are reactionaries. Although it is true that many of the scholars in that group are classical liberals, many are not.⁹ The stronger common denominator is that they tend to be nearly exclusively economists or political scientists familiar with public choice theory. As such, it is unsurprising that the reply from that latter group has been to—sometimes ungenerously—depict the former as being economically illiterate.¹⁰ It is unsurprising that conversations between both sides have essentially stalled and what has seeped into public discourse (when policy discussions are involved) has caused vitriolic attacks.¹¹ This stalling of the conversation can be resolved only by a rigorous econometric investigation of whether the Quiet revolution changed the course of Quebec’s economic evolution and the nature of the state. This is why, in the next section, we rely on the use of synthetic control methods to break the deadlock.

3. Data and methodology

3.1. The synthetic control method

The goal of our empirical analysis is to test whether the exceptional (relative to the other provinces) policy reforms associated with the Quiet Revolution of 1960 represent a break point in the development of Quebec’s economy. Obviously, the starting point should be the size of the state (measured by spending as a share of GDP). Because the argument is that Quebec enacted more radical reforms than the rest of Canada starting in 1960, this should be visible in the size of government. The other indicators we use speak to different dimensions of living standards. We use seven such indicators to test this hypothesis: GDP per worker, GDP per capita, size-adjusted household income, real wages for unskilled workers, life expectancy at birth, enrolment rates in primary and secondary schools and schooling outcomes by schooling cohort.

The synthetic control method is used to estimate the causal effects of the Quiet Revolution on our six indicators. Synthetic control was originally developed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and Abadie et al. (2010) and has since been used in numerous applied studies in economics (Acemoglu et al. 2016, Bohn et al. 2014, Cunningham and Shah 2018, Geloso and Grier 2022, Grier and Maynard 2016, Born et al. 2019, Geloso and Bologna Pavlik 2021).¹² The purpose of synthetic control is to perform quantitative case studies of aggregate units to answer questions related to the effect of policy interventions or other events. However, instead of comparison units being chosen with complete discretion of the researcher, a data-driven process is used to create a counterfactual (synthetic) control unit from a donor pool of units. The donor pool of units is chosen by the researcher and intended to represent a group of units that is similar to the treated unit. The synthetic control unit will track the real outcomes in the period prior to intervention. If the identifying assumptions are met, the difference between the real and synthetic outcomes observed post-intervention are the estimated treatment effect of the policy intervention or other event. In our case, the treatment must be understood as Quebec’s more comprehensive turn (relative to other provinces) to a more activist government.

Abadie (2021) suggests there are three primary data requirements to credibly apply the synthetic control method. These requirements are aggregate data on predictors and outcomes, sufficient pre-intervention information and sufficient post-intervention information. The data we use in our analysis (see section 3.3) meet all three requirements. We have yearly aggregate data on all predictors and outcomes at the province level from 1945 to 1975. This gives us 15 years of pre-intervention data and 15 years post-intervention data, where 1960 marks the year of intervention. Under these conditions, we can use the synthetic control method to construct a synthetic Quebec in which the Quiet Revolution did not occur (i.e., Quebec continues evolving like other provinces) and compare it with the actual outcomes for Quebec.

Given a set of donor pool units and predictors, weights are assigned determining the importance of each donor unit and predictor in the creation of synthetic Quebec. Our donor pool consists of the other Canadian provinces except for Newfoundland.¹³ Following Geloso and Grier (2022), the logic of using the other Canadian provinces as our donor pool rests on two facts. The provinces share the same currency and, over the period of interest, have increasingly similar underlying macroeconomic processes. For these two reasons, we can be confident the identifying assumptions of synthetic control method are satisfied such that the post-intervention differences between actual outcomes and synthetic outcomes represent estimates of causal treatment effects. The predictor variables we use include pre-intervention outcomes and variables that affect those outcomes. In each specification, a donor pool unit receives more weight the better it predicts pre-intervention outcomes in Quebec, and similarly for predictors. The resulting donor unit weights and predictor weights minimize the mean squared prediction error between Quebec and synthetic Quebec.¹⁴

It should be noted that minimizing the mean squared prediction error does not guarantee that outcomes for synthetic Quebec closely track actual outcomes for Quebec. The synthetic control estimation provides the best possible match given the available pool of donor units and predictors. There is the possibility that, in situations where outcomes for Quebec lie far outside those for the other provinces, the resulting synthetic Quebec is a poor match. For our purposes, there are two virtues of the synthetic control method. First, it tells us what would have happened if Quebec had continued to behave like its counterfactual. Second, if the fit is strong, but there are no differences between the counterfactual and the actual in the treatment period, then we can say that the treatment was not significant. This second virtue will matter heavily when considering one of the criticisms of the second group of scholars, who claim that the seeds of convergence were sown in the 1940s.

The above two virtues stem from three technical advantages of the synthetic control method as proposed by Abadie (2021), which have been adapted to our application: (i) straightforward verification that the assigned weights making up the synthetic control unit sum to one and therefore are free from extrapolation, (ii) the difference between the actual Quebec data and the synthetic Quebec will be clearly observable in the pre-intervention and post-intervention periods, giving a visual of how well the synthetic unit fits the actual data prior to the Quiet Revolution, and (iii) the makeup of the synthetic control unit can be shown for each test, making clear which provinces are contributing to our counterfactual Quebec. These advantages will allow us to provide a strong empirical evaluation of the claim that the Quiet Revolution represents a historical break in the economic fortunes of Quebec from 1960 through 1975.

While the synthetic control method has its advantages, it is not without limitation. For instance, in our application, we are treating 1960 as the “treatment” year in which the Quiet Revolution begins and examining deviations between actual and synthetic Quebec. Because synthetic Quebec is constructed using data from the other Canadian provinces, it is possible that other institutional changes occur around 1960 similar to the Quiet Revolution. If that is the case, we may underestimate the causal effects of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. However, this limitation is not an issue here because of the formulation of our question. We are not trying to create a counterfactual where the state remains exactly as it was before the Quiet Revolution. We are generating a counterfactual that tells us if Quebec’s changes in 1960 were more intense than changes in the rest of Canada and if these faster changes also mapped onto improvements in living standards. Remember that claims about the Quiet Revolution are that Quebec had a unique shift in terms of government involvement in social and economic affairs. In other words, the synthetic control method enables us to determine whether the Quiet Revolution constituted a unique set of institutional changes that propelled Quebec forward along the indicators we consider.

We implement synthetic control using the R package developed by Jens Haimueller and Alexis Diamond.¹⁵ The package uses optimization algorithms to find the combination of predictor and donor unit weights that minimize the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) in the pre-intervention period.¹⁶ There are several optimization methods that can be chosen; however, we rely on the default “Nelson–Mead” optimization and “BFGS” optimization.¹⁷ Both methods are used to construct the synthetic control, and the method yielding the lowest MSPE is chosen. The weights selected by the best method are used as a distinct synthetic Quebec for each of our eight indicators.

3.2. Inference

Following Cavallo et al. (2013) and the procedure provided in Galiani and Quistorff (2017), we conduct inference on the estimated treatment effects in Quebec by first falsely assigning treatment to all donor units and estimating placebo treatment effects in the post-intervention period. This produces a distribution of treatment effects in each year post-intervention that can be compared with the estimated treatment effects for Quebec. The treatment effects are studentized by dividing by their respective pre-intervention match quality given by the root mean squared prediction error (RMSPE). Some placebos may produce large treatment effects but track real outcomes in the pre-intervention period poorly (i.e., high RMSPE). Dividing by RMSPE discounts those effects, producing a distribution of treatment effects in each period weighted by the quality of pre-intervention fit. We sum the number of placebo treatment effects at least as large as the Quebec treatment effect in absolute value and divide by the number of donor units to calculate two-sided p-values for treatment effects in each period t.¹⁸ This is captured by the following equation:

p-value = Pr(|α̂ᴾ_jt| ≥ |α̂_1t|) = [ Σ_{j>1} I(|α̂ᴾ_jt/RMSPE_j| ≥ |α̂_1t/RMSPE_1|) ] / J, (1)

where α̂ᴾ_jt and α̂_1t are the estimated treatment effects for the placebo units and actual treated unit, respectively, where the effect is the difference between actual outcomes and synthetic outcomes for each unit in period t. RMSPE_j and RMSPE_1 are the pre-intervention root mean squared prediction errors for each placebo and Quebec. J is the number of placebo provinces, which is equal to the number of donor units. Given the small number of donor units, Quebec treatment effects are statistically significant only if there are no placebo effects at least as large to give a p-value equal to 0.

3.3. Data

We collect data on our outcome and predictor variables for the Canadian provinces from 1945 to 1975 using various publicly available databases and secondary sources. Government expenditures are defined as gross general expenditures from 1945 to 1947 and again from 1965 to 1975, gross ordinary expenditures from 1948 to 1957 and net general expenditures from 1958 to 1964. This is problematic in terms of level but not in terms of evolution over time (Dupré 1988). Real GDP per worker, real GDP per capita and nominal GDP are all collected from the online Finances of the Nation Macroeconomic Database.¹⁹ Real GDP figures from this database are deflated using a CPI to 2020 Canadian dollars. We also use household-size adjusted income per capita from Geloso et al. (2016). We also used real hourly wages.²⁰ To create those estimates, we relied on the industrial composite of average weekly wages reported in table E49-59 of the Historical Statistics of Canada. We then used the Earnings and Hours of Work in Manufacturing Survey (for 1946 to 1969), the Man-hours and hourly earnings report (for 1970) and the Employment, Earnings and Hours Survey (from 1971 to 1975) to create a continuous estimate of work hours to divide weekly wages. The use of wages is particularly interesting as a macroeconomic indicator with regards to the Quiet Revolution. Wages will speak to labour income, which constitutes a share of total income, and it is also closer to median income than GDP per capita. Given descriptions of Quebec’s economic history, francophones are expected to have a larger share of their income coming from labour and also to be closer to median income in the province (given that anglophones were richer than them). One of the aims of the increased involvement of the state in the economy was to push up francophones, which is why we expect the real wages to be able to speak to this aspect of the Quiet Revolution.²¹

Data on school enrolment and nominal government expenditures were collected from the Canada Year Book historical collection.²² School enrolment covers public, private and federal primary and secondary schools across Canada. Total enrolment data from these sources are missing for all provinces in 1948, 1954, 1955 and 1966 to 1968. Those missing values are imputed via linear interpolation. Total enrolment is converted to a ratio of school age population using population data for ages 5 to 19 from the Statistics Canada database. However, enrolment rates are not perfect measures of educational achievements because they speak to lags in human capital accumulation. This is why we employ a second measure of human capital: the average years of total schooling reached by age 14 (what we call “schooling cohorts”) across provinces as calculated by Oreopoulos (2006). Oreopoulos (2006) used Canadian census data from 1971 to 2000 to calculate total years of schooling (including postsecondary education) by birth cohort, province of birth, gender and year of census. Using his weights, we collapse the data to calculate a weighted average of total years of schooling by province of birth and year at age 14. This method is not perfect because there are two potential problems. First, many people born in one province may move to another province or multiple provinces throughout their lives. Second, our analysis is focused on estimating the effects of intervention from 1960 onward. By using the year for schooling at age 14, there is bound to be some error in how policy changes related to the Quiet Revolution affected education decisions for those already at age 14. However, it does act as a complement to the enrolment data.

As for life expectancy from birth (males and females), the data are collected from the Canadian Human Mortality Database. We convert raw life expectancy data to a life expectancy index, setting life expectancy in 1945 equal to 100 for each province.²³ Summary statistics for the eight outcome variables and other predictors used in our estimations are reported in table 1.

Table 1. Summary statistics of outcome and predictor variables

3.4. Robustness checks

We also want to create robustness checks for our results. To do so, we shift to two alternative attempts to assess whether the Quiet Revolution marked a sizable departure. The first is to use what we will call the “time series approach.” Harvey and Thiele (2021) point out that the counterfactual may be invalid for a non-stationary synthetic (which is the case here) if, absent the treatment, the difference between the synthetic and the actual data is non-stationary as well during the treatment period (p. 73). This means that controls must be selected with the ideal that they “share common trends with the target” (Harvey and Thiele 2021, p. 73). Instead, they propose to use dynamic models where donor units are selected on the basis of stationarity tests applied to the difference with the treated unit. They used their alternative method to compare with two of the “stylized cases” (i.e., those used to pioneer the method) of synthetic control: German reunification and Proposition 99 on tobacco in California. They were able to generate similar treatment effects from this alternative method.

Second, we employed what we will call the “panel data approach” based on Hsiao et al. (2012) and Bai et al. (2014). This method differs from both synthetic and the “time series approach” from Harvey and Thiele (2021). Normally, a panel approach would be well suited to difference-in-differences (DD). However, DD requires that there be no selection of the treated and that changes in the controls are shared (as well as the effect of changes on the dependent variable). Bai et al. (2014, p. 2) illustrate how this can be violated using housing prices in China and property taxes. Because local governments have varying degrees of power, Bai et al. (2014) argue that cities can respond differently (in relation to their relative powers) to demand-side shocks that are shared. As a result, housing prices are differently affected. Regionally heterogeneous effects on housing prices that cannot be well controlled for could thus lead to the incorrect attribution of effects to property tax changes. A similar analogy can be driven for Quebec because of its linguistic makeup. Francophones from Quebec are not as mobile as anglophones in Canada because leaving the province requires learning English. As such, Quebec’s unique linguistic set-up could cause a similar effect as in Bai et al. (2014) with respect to housing prices. This will be particularly true in the creation of the pre-treatment fit. If there is an unmeasured shock that has regionally heterogeneous effects, it could affect the donor weights. The method of Bai et al. (2014) offers a way around this issue. They rely on the correlation pattern between treated units and controlled units before the treatment. In practice, this gives different weights to different weights—which is similar to synthetic control methods in spirit. However, it is different in that Bai et al. (2014) point out that it is computationally less demanding and that it can indirectly deal with issues of non-stationarity. Practically, we expect the time series approach to be potentially the one that could most differ with the synthetic control. In contrast, Bai et al. (2014, p. 2) make it clear the panel data approach has relatively small differences with synthetic control methods. For the sake of brevity, we will not include the full results of these robustness checks. This is because it would lengthen the paper by more than two dozen tables and a dozen figures. Moreover, the results are not noticeably different. Rather, we will simply mention them in footnote at each relevant juncture and refer readers to supplementary materials.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Material living standards

Table 2 reports the makeup of the estimated synthetic Quebec for each of our material living standards indicators. Synthetic Quebec for the first indicator, real GDP per worker, shown in the second column is comprised primarily of Manitoba (66.5%) and the remaining substantial contributions are from Ontario (22.6%) and Prince Edward Island (10.8%). In contrast, the provinces primarily making up synthetic Quebec in our specification for real GDP per capita shown in the third column are Ontario (49.7%) and Prince Edward Island (25.7%), and the other substantial contributions come from Saskatchewan (14.8%) and Nova Scotia (9.4%). The synthetic Quebec estimate for the third indicator, size-adjusted household income, shown in the fourth column, closely matches that for real GDP per capita, with Ontario (44.1%) and Prince Edward Island (47.4%) making up the majority of the unit and Nova Scotia (6.1%) being the other substantial contribution. We will discuss the fit and results of each material living standards synthetic control separately below.

Table 2. Province weights in synthetic control models of material living standards for Quebec

4.1.1. Real GDP per worker

Table 3 shows the predictor balance between Quebec and synthetic Quebec for real GDP per worker. Pre-intervention outcomes in 1945, 1952 and 1959, and the pre-intervention averages of government spending as a percentage of GDP and population are used to predict real GDP per worker. Most of the predictive weight comes from pre-intervention outcomes, which together account for over 75% of the predictive power.²⁴ As a result, pre-intervention outcomes are the most balanced predictors between Quebec and synthetic Quebec. Average population stands out as poorly balanced between the two units; however, the variable contributes minimally to the predictive power of the synthetic unit. Despite the unbalanced predictors, the synthetic Quebec tracks Quebec well. The RMSPE reported in table 3 provides a summary measure for the match quality of synthetic Quebec, which is around $886. Average GDP across all provinces in the pre-intervention period is $42,052; the RMSPE for the synthetic control represents only 2% of this average.²⁵

Table 3. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for real GDP per worker in Quebec

The fit of synthetic Quebec in this specification can be visually inspected in panel (a) of figure 1. Real GDP per worker in Quebec is closely tracked by real GDP per worker of synthetic Quebec. This provides useful qualitative information for the reliability of our synthetic unit as a relevant counterfactual. The two units continue to track each other well in the post-intervention period. Recall that synthetic Quebec is estimated using only data from the pre-intervention period; outcomes in the post-intervention period are projected using the assigned weights. Panel (b) of figure 1 shows the estimated treatment effects from 1961 to 1975 on real GDP per worker as the difference between Quebec and synthetic Quebec. We estimate a positive effect on real GDP per worker, which is highest in 1961 at nearly $2,000. These positive effects diminish until going negative, starting in 1967. The negative effects on real GDP per worker continue, apart from a small positive effect in 1972, until the end of our sample. The relative declines in real GDP per worker found in the post-intervention period are cumulatively much larger than the estimated positive effects. Summing the treatment effects from 1961 to 1975, there is $11,700 relative decline in GDP per worker during the post-intervention period, equivalent to 16% of average real GDP per worker for synthetic Quebec from 1961 to 1975. Although the effects are large, they are statistically insignificant, as shown by the p-values above and below the treatment effect bars in panel (b) of figure 1. The lack of statistical significance suggests that 1960 does not represent a break point in Quebec’s economic history. The closest we come to finding a statistically significant effect is in 1961 and later in 1973; even then, the p-values are a high 12.5%, indicating that one other province in our donor pool for which we falsely assigned Quiet Revolution intervention had a larger standardized effect relative to its synthetic counterpart. Similar results are found for the other two measures of material living standards.

Figure 1: (a) Real GDP per worker (in $2020) for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on real GDP per worker, p-values of effects shown above (below) each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.1.2. Real GDP per capita

We use a similar set of predictors to estimate synthetic Quebec for real GDP per capita. Table 4, showing the predictor balance between synthetic Quebec and Quebec for real GDP per capita, also shows that pre-intervention outcomes produce most of the predictive power in our estimates. The RMSPE we find in this estimation is also low, reflecting a high-quality match between Quebec and synthetic Quebec that is confirmed in panel (a) of figure 2, which plots real GDP per capita in Quebec and synthetic Quebec from 1945 to 1975. Shown in panel (b) of figure 2 are our estimated treatment effects, which are both positive and negative, though the effects for real GDP per capita are smaller in magnitude than those for real GDP per worker. The cumulative effect is a $6,240 decline in real GDP per capita in Quebec relative to synthetic Quebec. Importantly, these results are also statistically insignificant. There is little evidence that the Quiet Revolution had an effect on real GDP per capita distinct from that for the placebo units.²⁶

Table 4. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for real GDP per capita in Quebec

Figure 2: (a) Real GDP per capita (in $2020) for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on real GDP per capita, p-values of effects shown above (below) each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.1.3. Size-adjusted household income

Next, we estimate a synthetic Quebec is size-adjusted household income. Table 5 reports the balance and fit for this synthetic Quebec. Once again, the synthetic Quebec relies heavily on pre-intervention outcomes to predict actual outcomes for Quebec, leading to a strong balance in our three pre-intervention outcome predictors. Balance for the other two predictors is weak; however, we still obtain a strong match between synthetic and actual Quebec. The RMPSE for this synthetic Quebec represents 3% of the average for household income in the pre-intervention period. Panel (a) of figure 3 also shows that household income in Quebec is closely tracked by synthetic Quebec in the pre-intervention period. Panel (b) of figure 3 shows our estimated treatment effects for household income, which in this case are more consistently negative than the other two measures of living standards, with only marginally positive gains estimated in the first two years following 1960.²⁷ These effects are small in magnitude relative to those found for the other measures of material living standards and similarly are statistically insignificant. The cumulative decline in household income between 1960 and 1975 for Quebec relative to synthetic Quebec is $8,254.

Table 5. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for size-adjusted household Income in Quebec

Figure 3: (a) Size-adjusted household income (in $2002) for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on household income, p-values of effects shown above (below) each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.1.4. Real hourly wages

For our final measure, we use real hourly wages. Table 6 reports the province weights for the synthetic. As can be seen, most provinces give some weight to the synthetic, but Alberta and Manitoba comprise the majority of the weight. Table 7 reports predictor balance and fit. We obtain a strong match pre-treatment. The RMPSE for the synthetic Quebec is less than half a percent of hourly wages. Panel (a) of figure 4 also shows that hourly wages closely tracked the synthetic Quebec in the treatment period. In the first years of the 1960s, there is a small but positive (and significant) effect. The effect, when significant, is less than 14 cents per hour (less than 6% of hourly wages). That effect disappears by the late 1960s.²⁸

Table 6. Province weights in synthetic control model of real hourly wages in Quebec

Table 7. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for real hourly wages in Quebec

Figure 4: (a) Real hourly wages (in $1971 by province) for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1946–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on real hourly wages, p-values of effects shown above each effect. Figure available in the published version.

The results of our synthetic control estimates across the four measures of material living standards provide little evidence that the Quiet Revolution can justifiably be considered a break point in the development of Quebec’s economy. If anything, living standards would have been higher in Quebec absent the Quiet Revolution especially during the 1970s. This claim, however, can be only weakly made given the lack of statistical significance found for the estimated treatment effects across all measures and does not support the contention that the Quiet Revolution caused a substantial shift in economic performance. The other Canadian provinces experienced similar changes over this time such that the attribution of changes in living standards to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec is unfounded.

4.2. Life expectancy at birth

Now we turn to our results for life expectancy. Synthetic Quebec in our specification estimating the effects of the Quiet Revolution on life expectancy is made up mostly of British Columbia (43.3%) and New Brunswick (53.5%) with minor contributions from Alberta, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan, as shown in table 8. The use of a life expectancy index allows us to estimate a synthetic Quebec that tracks actual Quebec well. Most of the predictors, except for the average of the life expectancy index, are not well balanced, but the RMSPE reported in table 9 is much lower than the average RMSPE for the placebo units. There are significant deviations between Quebec and the synthetic unit in the pre-intervention period, as shown in panel (a) of figure 5; however, the two follow similar trends over time. Quebec begins to diverge from synthetic Quebec a few years prior to 1960 and continues from 1960 on. It is important to note that, despite the divergence prior to intervention, we will be able to calculate statistical significance because our treatment effects will account for the pre-intervention RMSPE.

Table 8. Province weights in synthetic control model of life expectancy in Quebec

Table 9. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for life expectancy in Quebec

We find that there are small statistically significant effects on life expectancy after 1960, shown in panel (b) of figure 5. These effects are reported as the percentage difference between the life expectancy index values for Quebec and synthetic Quebec. Positive effects ranging from under 0.5% to 2% are found in all 15 post-intervention years, and eight of those effects are statistically significant. Life expectancy in Quebec increased faster relative to its 1960 value than it did for synthetic Quebec. If we convert the life index values to life expectancy in years, we find that Quebec gained around 2.26 years in life expectancy between 1960 and 1975. Synthetic Quebec gained 2.15 years in life expectancy over the same 15-year period. The net effect (2.26 minus 2.15) is a miniscule gain in life expectancy for Quebec relative to synthetic Quebec. While the results are consistently positive and some are statistically significant, the magnitudes of the effects hardly constitute what would be considered a dramatic shift in outcomes.²⁹

Figure 5: (a) Life expectancy at birth index (1945 = 100) for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on life expectancy as the percentage difference between index values, p-values of effects shown above each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.3. Educational outcomes

4.3.1. Enrolment rates

Enrolment rates in Quebec prior to the Quiet Revolution are substantially lower than those for the other provinces and rapidly increase in the years leading up to 1960. These two features make it difficult to produce a well-matched synthetic Quebec. The synthetic Quebec for enrolment rates that we estimate is a combination of New Brunswick (34%) and Prince Edward Island (66%), as reported in table 10. Table 11 shows that the predictors used to estimate the synthetic unit are poorly balanced and result in an RMSPE that is nearly eight times larger than the average RMSPE for placebo units. The poor match in pre-intervention trends for enrolment rates is also shown in panel (a) of figure 6. Enrolment rates in Quebec lie below those for synthetic Quebec over the entire pre-intervention period.³⁰

Table 10. Province weights in synthetic control model of enrolment rates in Quebec

Table 11. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for enrolment rates in Quebec

Panel (b) of figure 6 reports the estimated treatment effects. Most of these effects are statistically insignificant, as would be expected from the poor match between Quebec and synthetic Quebec. As we will see below, this inability to obtain a good fit is relevant. Bringing our attention to actual enrolment rates reported in panel (a) of figure 6 once again, enrolment clearly begins increasing long before 1960, due likely to factors other than the Quiet Revolution, such as compulsory schooling legislation, which was implemented in 1943 in Quebec (we return to this below in section 4.5). Furthermore, the two statistically significant treatment effects in 1961 and 1969 roughly cancel each other out.

Figure 6: (a) Enrolment rates for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on enrolment as a percentage of school-age population, p-values of effects shown above (below) each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.3.2. Schooling Achievements

We replicate the same exercise as with enrolment but with the schooling achievements by schooling cohorts, as created by Oreopoulos (2006). Table 12 reports the province weights for synthetic Quebec in this model. New Brunswick provides the vast majority of the synthetic. This is unsurprising because the province had a large francophone (i.e., less-educated) minority, whose educational outcomes matched those of francophones in Quebec. Moreover, the province was roughly as poor as Quebec relative to the rest of Canada, as shown in the balance between predictors reported in table 13. Table 13 also shows that the RMSPE is 0.277 and not very different than the RMSPE for the donor pool average. This is similar to what we found with enrolment. However, the difference is far smaller: whereas it was eight times greater with enrolments, it is only a quarter larger with schooling achievements. As a result, the fit is decent even if it is not ideal, as can be seen in the pre-treatment periods of panel (a) of figure 7.³¹ After 1960, there is a constant and generally significant difference between the synthetic and the actual data, shown in panel (b) of figure 7. The effect amounts to slightly less than one extra year of completed schooling. As we will see in section 4.5, this is unsurprising given reforms that followed the 1961 Parent Commission report.

Table 12. Province weights in synthetic control model of average years of total schooling in Quebec

Table 13. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for average years of total schooling in Quebec

Figure 7: (a) Average years of total schooling for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on average years of total schooling, p-values of effects shown above each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.4. Government size

The results for the size of government provide the most convincing evidence for a historical break associated with the Quiet Revolution. Table 14 shows the weights on control units making up synthetic Quebec in this specification. Ontario (79%) again makes up most of synthetic Quebec, and Saskatchewan (19.4%) contributes substantially. Table 15 shows the predictors for this synthetic Quebec are relatively well balanced, especially in the three years of government expenditure share and four years of public-school enrolment, which drive most of the predictive power of the synthetic. Synthetic Quebec tracks actual Quebec very well in this specification, as shown in panel (a) figure 8 and the RMSPE reported in table 15.

Table 14. Province weights in synthetic control model of government size in Quebec

Table 15. Predictor balance and weights and synthetic fit for government size in Quebec

Panel (b) of figure 8 presents our main results for this estimation. There are large and statistically significant positive effects for the size of government relative to GDP after 1960. These effects represent a shift in the economy of Quebec as the government commanded more resources. By 1975, government expenditures as a share of GDP in Quebec were 4.7 percentage points higher relative to synthetic Quebec. Using the weights of synthetic Quebec to get an estimate of nominal GDP, this 4.7 percentage point increase in government expenditures is equivalent to $2.7 billion (nominal) in government spending that would not have occurred absent the Quiet Revolution.³² This also may speak to why some researchers have viewed the Quiet Revolution as a break point in history. With government growth happening at this pace, there would be substantial changes to how the economy operated.

Figure 8: (a) Government expenditures as a percentage of nominal GDP for Quebec and synthetic Quebec, 1945–1975; (b) Estimated treatment effects of the Quiet Revolution on government size as a percentage of nominal GDP, p-values of effects shown above each effect. Figure available in the published version.

4.5. Discussion

Our findings are mixed. With regards to health outcomes and size of government, it appears that the Quiet Revolution did mark a departure relative to the counterfactual built on the rest of Canada. As such, it appears that it is true that Quebec’s government became more strongly interventionist after 1960 and that there were some benefits with regards to health outcomes and (ambiguously) schooling. However, those effects are small, and it is not echoed on other metrics of well-being such as incomes and wages. Moreover, the ambiguous effect with respect to education—namely the educational achievement by age 14—could simply be the mechanical result of the decision of the provincial government to raise the compulsory age of schooling from 14 to 16 following the report of the Parent Commission of 1961. Overall, these results seem to fall between the two existing camps. The Quiet Revolution was not a benefit. However, it was not a drag either. On the whole, its effects were trivial or attributable to very modest policy changes that did not require a major expansion in government activity.

How much confidence can we assign to these results? Are they consistent with other findings? How can they be interpreted? There are three answers to these questions. First, Albouy (2008), Nadeau (2010), Vaillancourt (1988, 2020), Geloso (2017), Dean and Geloso (2022) and Gagnon et al. (2022) made findings that confirm our results regarding material living standards by considering the within-Quebec wage gap between French-speaking and English-speaking workers. These articles are the only ones that deploy econometric efforts in the matter. They all found that wage gaps were far smaller among younger French-Canadians so that, by the early 1970s, they were as rich as English-Canadians in the province. They also find that they had begun to converge before the 1960s. Dean and Geloso (2022) found that convergence had begun between the 1941 and 1951 censuses and that it continued unabetted to the 1971 census. Their work essentially points to convergence being a process already underway by 1961. As French-speaking workers represented the vast majority of Quebec workers (more than 80%), our findings of no effect of the Quiet Revolution on incomes is unsurprising.

Second, Gagnon et al. (2022) found that the francophone-anglophone convergence could be due largely to educational reforms—notably compulsory zero-priced education until age 14—enacted in 1943.³³ Quebec was a late adopter of compulsory schooling by many decades, which is why its enrolment rates were far below those observed in the rest of Canada. This is evident from the Geloso (2017) work on education and our results on enrolments. The synthetic’s weak fit with regards to enrolment fit pre-1960 is probably due to compulsory education being a more significant reform than the changes enacted during the Quiet Revolution. These educational reforms of the 1940s would have yielded visible fruits only during the 1960s and 1970s as children exited schools and entered the workforce. It would have reinforced any other ongoing convergence process. Moreover, our results when using the schooling cohorts from Oreopoulos (2006) are also conceptually consistent with those of Gagnon et al. (2022). Indeed, the increase in educational outcomes is driven probably by the decision of the Quebec government to further increase the minimum age for dropping out from 14 to 16. This is directionally similar as Gagnon et al. (2022) and suggests that the artisans of the Quiet Revolution merely expanded on the 1943 reform. While this may look like a positive in favour of the Quiet Revolution, it is not as strong a statement as one might initially believe. Indeed, the raising of the compulsory schooling is a minor reform during the Quiet Revolution and it required little extra spending from the government (in comparison to other programs).

These answers are, at first glance, problematic. How could there be a large expansion of the state with either no changes or modest changes in outcomes? Three answers are possible. One answer would be that the evidence connecting welfare states adversely to economic growth tends to be weak (Bergh 2020; Lindert 2004a, 2004b, 2021). This is a strong possibility. However, it is not mutually exclusive with a second answer: Quebec didn’t have to pay for the expansion of its state. Starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, federal transfers to provinces increased dramatically—especially those to poorer provinces like those of Atlantic Canada and Quebec (Usher 1980, 1995; Boadway and Flatters 1980; Dahlby 2011; Geloso 2017; Tombe and Winter 2021). Federal transfers of all forms—see panel (a) of figure 9—went from less than 1% in 1955 to close to 2% by 1960 and then to more than 5% by 1975. That proportion is equal roughly to the gap between the synthetic control and the actual scenario—see panel (a) of figure 9—throughout the period from 1960 to 1975. In fact, we can subtract the pre-1960 transfer level from the proportion on panel (b) of figure 9 to get an idea of the effect of additional transfers. In such a case, a sizable share (but not the lion’s share) of the treatment effect appears to be represented by these additional transfers. This echoes numerous scholars who were skeptical of the Quiet Revolution’s importance and argued that it was fuelled largely by federal transfers, starting with the 1957 equalization program (Bélanger and Migué 2007, 2013; Vaillancourt and Laberge 2010). This is consistent with our findings regarding the size of government. The onset of the Quiet Revolution occurred simultaneously with the ramping up of federal transfers to provinces, which suggests that the expansion of the state was essentially made possible by them.

Figure 9: (a) Effects of the Quiet Revolution on the size of government, 1961–1975; (b) Federal transfers to Quebec as share of GDP, 1945–1975. Figure available in the published version.

The third answer is one that tends to be forgotten in the historiography but that was stipulated in its best form by Albert Breton (1964). Breton argued that nationalism is about redistribution towards the privileged group. The strong capture of the state by francophones in the 1960s was not meant to stimulate Quebec’s economic development but rather to increase the living standards of francophones relative to anglophones. In Breton’s view, there is no automatic synonymity between “living standards in Quebec” and “living standards of francophones.” In the synthetic controls that speak to each of these categories, the treatment effect could evolve in separate directions. Our results on schooling achievements and real wages speak to this possibility. The educational reforms of the 1960s were meant to close the schooling gap with anglophones and allow francophones to occupy high administration positions. The ramping up of state involvement was meant to redistribute income favourably towards francophones. Because wages are expected to speak to median income more than GDP per capita and because francophone incomes were closer to median (see, notably, Rouillard and Rouillard 2020), we believe that our wage-based results speak to this nationalistic aim of greater state involvement. However, the effects we found were small and suggests that the gains to francophones were limited.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, we revisited a contentious and unresolved question in Canadian economic history: Was Quebec’s Quiet Revolution—a series of momentous and unique state reforms in the 1960s and 1970s—the cause of the province’s faster improvement (than in the rest of Canada) in living standards? Resolution of this (historically acrimonious) question has been elusive for decades. Using a synthetic control approach—a method ideally suited for this question—we believe that we have provided a strong step forward.

Our results suggest that the Quiet Revolution was indeed a departure in terms of what the state did. Quebec’s state grew exceptionally larger than it otherwise would have had had it not been for the Quiet Revolution. This is consistent with the more traditional historiography arguing for a marked departure in terms of the state’s involvement in the economy. However, we do not find in favour of the claim that the departure generated important differences in the pace of Quebec’s convergence with respect to living standards. On all macroeconomic indicators, we find no significant effects. On one of the two educational measures, we find no effect as well. The only positive effects are for life expectancy at birth and schooling outcomes by schooling cohort. The former effect is minor in size. The latter is more important and suggests that educational achievements did increase in Quebec as a result of changes enacted during the Quiet Revolution.

These are important findings. Some scholars suggest that the Quiet Revolution was a drag (Migué 1998, Paquet 1999, Geloso 2017).³⁴ Without it, Quebec would have grown faster they argue. This position does not hold up to evidence. However, our results do not vindicate the more traditional literature either. Indeed, our results suggest that the Quiet Revolution was no boon to economic activity either and that it did not contribute significantly to Quebec’s economic convergence. As such, on a spectrum between the two existing camps outlined above, our results fall in the middle, with a modest favour towards those who downplay the Revolution’s importance.

The favour is due to two elements. First, our findings with regards to education suggest that the convergence process was indeed present since the 1940s but that the revolution accelerated it. Second, the expansion of the state was made possible largely by federal transfers to Quebec. They financed more generous social programs and a more interventionist stance with regards to development even though they appear to have had only limited benefits.

We believe our results are a step forward because they now force the conversation to move on to which factors pre-1960 mattered for initiating the convergence. They also invite the question of how to empirically speak to the origins of the Quiet Revolution. While we have no answers to both questions, our results narrow the conversation. And proceeding by elimination is always a step forward.

Supporting information

Supplementary material accompanies this article. The data and code that support the findings of this study are available in the Canadian Journal of Economics Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/YE3B1T.

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BibTeX

@article{geloso2025quiet,
  author = {Vincent Geloso and Chandler S. Reilly},
  title = {Revisiting Quebec's Quiet Revolution: A Synthetic Control Analysis},
  journal = {Canadian Journal of Economics},
  year = {2025},
  volume = {58},
  number = {2},
  pages = {548–579},
  doi = {10.1111/caje.70000},
}