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The linguistic wage gap in Quebec, 1901 to 1951

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Jason Dean
Jason Dean
Jason Dean
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Vincent Geloso at London School of Economics and Political Science
Vincent Geloso
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For most of Canadian economic history, French-Canadians (who composed more than a quarter of the country’s population) had living standards inferior to those of English-Canadians. This was true even within the province of Quebec, where the French-Canadians constituted a majority. Today, no significant gap remains in Quebec. Surprisingly however, the question of when the gap started to disappeared remains unanswered. Most of the attention has been dedicated to the long-available post-1970 census data, which show rapid convergence. However, it is unknown whether the convergence started before 1970. In this paper, we use more recently uncovered data from the censuses between 1901 and 1951 to provide such an answer. We find that there was convergence from 1901 to 1921, a reversal from 1921 to 1941 and a recovery between 1941 and 1951 that extended to 1971.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Cliometrica (2022) 16:615–637
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-021-00236-3
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The linguistic wage gap inQuebec, 1901 to1951
JasonDean1· VincentGeloso1
Received: 3 January 2021 / Accepted: 20 July 2021 / Published online: 20 August 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
For most of Canadian economic history, French-Canadians (who composed more
than a quarter of the country’s population) had living standards inferior to those
of English-Canadians. This was true even within the province of Quebec, where
the French-Canadians constituted a majority. Today, no significant gap remains in
Quebec. Surprisingly however, the question of when the gap started to disappeared
remains unanswered. Most of the attention has been dedicated to the long-availa-
ble post-1970 census data, which show rapid convergence. However, it is unknown
whether the convergence started before 1970. In this paper, we use more recently
uncovered data from the censuses between 1901 and 1951 to provide such an
answer. We find that there was convergence from 1901 to 1921, a reversal from 1921
to 1941 and a recovery between 1941 and 1951 that extended to 1971.
Keywords Canadian economic history· Discrimination· Wage gap· Quebec
economic history
JEL Classification N11· J42· R52
1 Introduction
The phrase “two solitudes” is a frequently repeated idiom that describes a sali-
ent fault line in Canadian society, one that separates French-Canadians (franco-
phones) from English-Canadians (anglophones). Originally coined by novelist Hugh
MacLennan near the end of World War II, the phrase illustrates the lack of commu-
nication and large socio-economic differences between both groups. That divide had
two axes: the first was that of the province Quebec (where the vast majority of fran-
cophones resided) versus the rest of Canada (henceforth ROC) and the second was
that of anglophones versus francophones within Quebec. At that point, Quebec was
considerably poorer (Taylor 1960; Lewis and McInnis 1984; Altman 1998; Fortin
* Vincent Geloso
vincentgeloso@hotmail.com
1 King’s University College, 266 Epworth Avenue, London, ONN6A2M3, Canada
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... For realistic and symbolic threat, these findings are consistent with the idea that social groups which possess considerable political and socioeconomic power and stability are less likely to perceive realistic and symbolic threat from outgroup members or be overly impacted by intergroup anxiety (Stephan et al., 1999b). Indeed, there is strong evidence that Quebec's francophone community feels secure in its socioeconomic status which has steadily risen over the past few decades based on variables such as mean income, the value of French in the job market, and the percentage of business ownership in the province (Albouy, 2008;Dean and Geloso, 2022;Gagnon et al., 2023;Vaillancourt et al., 2007). From a political standpoint, low levels of realistic and symbolic threat can also be attributed to the recently adopted legislation whose goal is to solidify the socioeconomic and cultural vitality of the francophone majority (Bourhis and Sioufi, 2017). ...
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... Empirical evidence on the returns to second-language knowledge has been consistent in documenting that native speakers of a minority language receive higher earnings after learning the majority language in their area of residence. Within Canada, the returns that francophones receive from learning English is substantial (Vaillancourt 1980, Carliner 1981, Albouy 2008, Grenier and Nadeau 2016, Dean and Geloso 2022, with the more recent estimates typically being on the order of 10-20 percent (Albouy 2008, Christofides andSwidinsky 2010). Furthermore, immigrants to Canada have also been documented as receiving positive labour market returns from learning English (Chiswick and Miller 2003, Orlov 2018, Bousmah et al. 2021). ...
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