infonet-economy

Child-care subsidies are meant to facilitate work for mothers with small children. The paper demonstrates that the predominant current income-dependent subsidy scheme in Switzerland (which is currently also discussed in Germany) creates strong negative work incentives especially for well qualified women. The example of the city of Zurich shows that it does not pay off for mothers to work more than one to at most three days per week, as any increase in the hours worked leads to a more than proportional rise in child-care costs. For more than one child, the effective total marginal tax rate, including child-care expenditures, can well exceed 100%. This effect is primarily due to the endogenous pricing of child-care facilities implied by the scheme, and much less to progressive taxation. Pushing these mothers out of the labor market creates a loss in human capital and tax revenues.