About time: age, period, and cohort effects on support for Quebec sovereignty

Abstract

Can age, period and cohort effects help explain support for Quebec sovereignty? Previous work on this question has focused mostly on the effects of age and cohort. We contribute to this debate by adding a period perspective. As such, our study is the first to investigate the impact of age, cohort and period effects in a single study of opinion towards sovereignty in Quebec. We take advantage of an original dataset that includes survey data collected between 1985 and 2012. We use these data to examine the impact of age, birth year and survey year on support for this constitutional option among francophone Quebeckers. Our results are in line with previous work: we show that younger Quebeckers are more likely to support sovereignty, and that some cohorts – namely, respondents born between 1945 and 1959 – are also more likely to favour this option. Perhaps more surprisingly, we find that specific events are comparatively the most important factor to explain fluctuations in Quebeckers' attitudes towards sovereignty.

Government spending preferences over the life cycle

“…confounded with age: the opinions that prevail in different age groups are not only explained by how old their members are but also by the generation to which they belong. Socialization effects have been confirmed repeatedly in the political behaviour literature(Jennings and Markus 1984;Neundorf and Soroka 2012;Vallée - Dubois et al 2020). For example, evidence has shown that "coming of age under sustained periods of Conservative governments" leads to the development of more conservative political values…”

Les (in)égalités de représentation en politique québécoise

“…Dans le contexte québécois, plusieurs écarts ont été notés quant aux préférences de ces groupes par rapport à l'indépendance du Québec. En effet, les femmes ont généralement moins appuyé l'indépendance du Québec quoique cette différence semble s'être estompée avec les plus récentes générations (Vallée-Dubois et al 2020). Les individus moins éduqués ont tendance à moins soutenir l'indépendance alors que c'est le contraire pour les moins fortunés (Vallée-Dubois et al 2020).…”

Age‐associations in British politics: Implications for the sociology of aging

“…Cohort‐effect advocates typically argue that particular age‐groups have inherent political characteristics that are somewhat consistent across their lives, and therefore, irrespective of age. Finally, arguments in support of period‐effects center on the importance of immediate context in temporarily determining political preferences across ages and cohorts, meaning that age‐ and cohort‐effects oscillate through history (Schwadel & Garneau, 2014; Vallée‐Dubois, Dassonneville & Godbout, 2020). Empirically disentangling these causal hypotheses is a particular vexing challenge because age, cohort and period are all proxy variables for time, meaning that they are linearly dependent, and therefore, generate multicollinearity in analyses (Fosse & Winship, 2019; Glen, 1976; Smets & Neundorf, 2014).…”