Goodbye salazar: the impact of the carnation revolution on living conditions

Abstract

The Carnation Revolution saw Portugal’s Estado Novo end via a military coup. This was followed by a critical period of instability that halted its past decades of economic growth. Was the decline in economic standards countered by the impact of social policies in living conditions? To weigh this impact we use the synthetic control method, mapping out data from similar OECD nations. We find that life expectancy and human capital increased more than its synthetic counterfactual, while fertility and marriage rates increased in the short-run (but declined after/in the 1980s) and age at childbirth declined in the late 1970s.