Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/339551 
Year of Publication: 
2026
Citation: 
[Journal:] German Economic Review (GER) [ISSN:] 1468-0475 [Volume:] 27 [Issue:] 1 [Year:] 2026 [Pages:] 53-86
Publisher: 
De Gruyter, Berlin
Abstract: 
How shall publicly provided excludable goods be financed - by general taxation or user fees? The general conclusion of the existing literature is that exclusive tax financing is neither efficient nor desirable under widely shared distributive goals. A striking example is childcare because here fees are often made dependent on parents' income. Given the rather clear arguments in favor of user fees for formal childcare, it is surprising to notice that some German states with leftist governments have abolished user fees and replaced them with pure tax financing. It is the purpose of this research to investigate the attitudes of politicians towards user fees for publicly funded childcare and to explore the justifications given for these attitudes. We do so by directly surveying members of eight federal state legislatures. The survey results confirm the experience of real political decisions in that left-leaning politicians tend to oppose parental fees. They do so mainly with the justification that "education must be free for all". Right-leaning politicians tend to support fees for various reasons. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the redistributive goals of leftist parties.
Subjects: 
childcare fees
Germany
legislators
survey
JEL: 
D63
H52
J13
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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