← Home

Dimension: Childcare Cost

Annual, full-time, sourced sub-national range · USD equivalent, market exchange rate

Greece
$910–$2,590
public/subsidized only, €70–200/mo
Germany
$0–$4,540
city/age-scaled; 3+ often free
Italy
$0–$5,960
public, municipal range; nat'l avg ~$3,800
UK
$9,520–$20,810
England (low) to Wales (high), under-2
US
$6,560–$25,540
MS (low) to DC (high), blended avg by state
$0 $6,500 $13,000 $19,500 $26,000
sourced range — bar spans two cited endpoints (Tier 1)
Comparability limitation, stated rather than hidden: every bar on this panel is a real sourced range, but the ranges are not measuring identical things. US and UK ranges are geographic (state / devolved nation) variation in a roughly consistent care type. Germany and Italy ranges are driven primarily by public subsidy structure (age threshold, municipal tariff) more than geography per se. Greece's range covers public/subsidized centers only — Greek private daycare runs €250–650/mo (~$3,240–$8,430/yr), which would put Greece's true full private-market range much closer to the UK's than this bar shows. We chose public-only for Greece because that's the more common actually-used option there, but flagging this means the Greece bar understates the ceiling a family without a public spot would face — worth deciding whether the next revision should show both, similar to Italy's public/private split.

Sources: US — Economic Policy Institute / Self.inc state-level childcare cost data (2025), blending infant and 4-year-old center-based care by state. Germany — city-level Kita fee schedules (Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, per cityparity Aug 2026 compilation) plus state childcare-fee policy pages (Handbook Germany). UK — Coram Family and Childcare Survey 2026, full-time under-2, England vs. Wales. Italy — Il Sole 24 Ore / TrueNumbers analysis of UIL/ISTAT municipal asilo nido tariff data (2025–26), national average and Mantova/Chieti extremes. Greece — Expat.com and DaycareFee.com compiled estimates of public center parental stipends and private daycare fees, Athens vs. smaller cities; weakest sourcing of the five (aggregator sites, not a government or EU statistical office) and flagged accordingly.