The Political Economy of Subsidized Day Care

Ted Bergstrom () and Sören Blomquist

ELSE working papers from ESRC Centre on Economics Learning and Social Evolution

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical model of political support for the public provision of day care. In an economy where there are high taxes on wage income, sel sh taxpayers with no children in the day care system may favor substantial public subsidies to day care because such subsidies induce mothers to join the labor force and hence pay income tax. Our model makes explicit quantitative predictions of the relation between the distribution of wages, the income tax rate, and the subsidy rate for day care that maximizes net tax revenue from parents of small children. Applying parameter values from Sweden and the United States, we nd that our model predicts a subsidy rate of between 50% and 100% for Sweden with its high tax rate on wages and between 15% and 30% for the U.S. with its lower tax rate on wages.

Keywords: Day care; Labor supply; Subsidy; Taxation; Public provision of private goods; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Related works:
Journal Article: The political economy of subsidized day care (1996)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Publicly Supplied Day Care (1994)
Working Paper: Political Economy of Subsidized Day Care (1994)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Subsidized Day Care (1993)
Working Paper: The Political Econmomy of Subsidized Day Care (1993)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:els:esrcls:015

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