ZURICH. Our recent coverage of childcare costs, including the finding that a family in Zurich can pay more for a crèche place than for its rent, drew an unusually large postbag. Readers wrote from every language region, and they did not agree with one another, which is usually a sign that the right question has been asked. A selection follows, lightly edited for length.
Two themes recurred. The first is the sheer variation between cantons, which several readers described as a lottery of geography. The second is the question of who the system is actually for: parents, employers or the state. We have kept the writers' own words and their own arithmetic. We publish the letters as they arrived, and we thank all who wrote.
M. Keller, Thun: Your figures match our life almost exactly. We pay CHF 2,350 a month for two children in the canton of Bern, and the subsidy threshold sits just below our combined salary, which is not a large one. The result is that her second income exists mainly to pay for the care that makes it possible. Nobody in Bern seems to find this circular, which tells you how long it has been since any of them did the arithmetic.
S. Fontana, Lugano: May I offer the view from Ticino, where a full-time place costs us CHF 1,100 a month and the municipality tops up the rest without ceremony. The difference is not wealth, since we are hardly the rich canton. It is a decision, taken years ago, to treat early-years care as infrastructure rather than as a private luxury. Your Zurich readers are not unlucky; they are governed differently.
Dr A. Brunner, Zurich: I will say the unpopular thing. Subsidising crèche places pours public money into a market that simply raises its prices to meet the subsidy, and the tax deduction for childcare, worth up to CHF 25,000 per child on the federal return, flows mostly to households like mine that least need it. If the state wants to help, it should build and run the places itself, as it does the schools, and stop feeding the middlemen.
P. Dubois, Lausanne: In Vaud we scale the fee to income, and the system works well enough that the waiting list, not the price, is now the scandal; my daughter waited fourteen months for a place. Before Bern designs any national scheme, it should come and study ours, and then fix the one thing we cannot, which is the shortage of trained staff. Money is not the binding constraint. People are.
H. Steiner, St. Gallen: What your coverage missed is the care that never appears on an invoice. Our grandchildren are looked after two days a week by their grandmother, as in thousands of families, and this invisible workforce is why the official costs look survivable. Any reform that pays only for institutional care punishes the families who organise it themselves. A care allowance, spent as the family chooses, would be fairer than another subsidy to the crèches.
R. Okafor, Basel: The real villain is the marginal tax rate, not the crèche. When my wife moved from three days a week to four, the extra salary was taxed as though it were the only salary, and after childcare the net gain was CHF 380 a month. We laughed, then we stopped laughing. Until the tax system stops treating the second earner as a luxury, no subsidy will fix the incentive to stay home.
E. Meierhans, Lucerne: I have run a crèche for nineteen years, and I beg your readers to look at the other side of the ledger. Our fees are high because our wages are low and still eat three quarters of the budget, because staffing ratios are regulated, as they should be, and because the building costs what buildings here cost. Blame us if you like, but the cheque you write each month is mostly other people's modest pay.