Childcare Mandates and Policy Feedback: Spatial Evidence from Swiss Canton Borders

Abstract

Does the provision of family-friendly policies reduce subsequent demand for further policy expansion? I examine this question in the context of a 2010 childcare mandate in the Swiss cantons of Bern and Zurich, which required municipalities to provide after-school care when demand exceeded ten children. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design at canton borders in predominantly German-speaking regions (excluding French-speaking and Italian-speaking cantons), I compare municipalities just inside treated cantons to those just outside. I find that municipalities in cantons with childcare mandates show 2.1 percentage points lower support for the March 2013 family policy referendum, a federal vote proposing constitutional protection for family-work compatibility. This negative effect, while not statistically significant at conventional levels (95% CI: $-5.5$ to $+1.4$ pp), is consistent across bandwidth specifications and suggestive of thermostatic policy feedback. However, because the design is cross-sectional without pre-mandate placebo outcomes, the estimated discontinuity may reflect pre-existing cantonal differences rather than the mandate's causal effect. The analysis contributes to literatures on policy feedback effects, the political economy of family policy, and geographic regression discontinuity methods.