RelokeaFamily allowances in Europe: the real ranking
Take a family and move it a hundred kilometres. Two parents, three children — 17 and in education, 14, and 3. Nothing else changes: not the number of children, not their ages, not the shape of the household.
What it receives each month in family allowances goes from CHF 1,239 to zero.
Not «next to nothing»: nothing. Two Western European countries pay this family no family allowance at all, and one of the two decided that in 2021.
The country that pays the most has no national family policy. The one that pays the least is a large founding member of the Union. Here are the eleven countries, the 2026 amounts, and above all the reasons.
Western Europe at a glance
This is not a map. Each country occupies a tile of the same size, placed according to its approximate position in Europe. On a real map, surface area would read as magnitude — Luxembourg would become invisible and Spain, which pays nothing, would dominate the image.
- Liechtenstein — €1,154 · entitlement ends at 18
- Luxembourg — €1,064 · indexed to wages
- Switzerland — €823 · CHF 698 to 1,239 depending on canton
- Germany — €777 · €259 per child, unconditional
- Belgium — €640 · Wallonia, 2 schemes
- Austria — €555 · + €213 tax credit
- Netherlands — €379 · paid QUARTERLY
- France — €212 · band 2 at CHF 100,000
- Italy — €174 · ISEE floor
- Portugal — nothing · 5th band: nothing
- Spain — nothing · allowance ABOLISHED in 2021
The ranking, with no preamble
What the same family receives per month in 2026
| Country (or canton) | Amount | Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Switzerland — Valais | CHF 1,239 | €1,324 |
| Switzerland — Geneva | CHF 1,137 | €1,215 |
| Switzerland — Vaud | CHF 1,112 | €1,188 |
| Liechtenstein | CHF 1,080 | €1,154 |
| Luxembourg | €1,064 | CHF 996 |
| Switzerland — Basel-Stadt | CHF 875 | €935 |
| Germany | €777 | CHF 727 |
| Austria (allowance + child tax credit) | €768 | CHF 719 |
| Switzerland — Zurich | CHF 751 | €802 |
| Switzerland — Ticino (federal minimum) | CHF 698 | €746 |
| Belgium (Wallonia) | €640 | CHF 599 |
| Austria (allowance alone) | €555 | CHF 519 |
| France — modest income | €423 | CHF 396 |
| Netherlands | €379 | CHF 355 |
| Italy — above the ISEE ceiling | €174 | CHF 163 |
| Portugal | nothing | nothing |
| Spain | nothing | nothing |
| France — household on CHF 100,000 (band 2) | €212 | CHF 198 |
| France — dual-earner household (band 3) | €106 | CHF 99 |
Three things jump out, and each has an explanation.
Switzerland occupies the top and the middle of the table at once. Valais pays CHF 1,239 where Ticino pays CHF 698 — for the same family, in the same country, in the same year. A gap of 78%.
France, whose family policy is a matter of national pride, brings up the rear. Not by accident, and not only for cross-border workers.
Italy pays €174 where Luxembourg pays €1,064. Six times less, between two countries of the Union.
Why Switzerland pays so much — and so unequally
This is the most interesting paradox in the table. Switzerland has no ambitious federal family policy: the Confederation merely sets a floor, CHF 215 per child and CHF 268 for a child in education. That is all.
The rest belongs to the cantons, and the cantons have overshot the floor massively. Valais pays CHF 435 for a third child, twice the federal minimum.
Three dimensions, where everyone else sees only one
A comparison that looks only at age gets it wrong by a hundred francs a month per child in five cantons. The Swiss scale actually turns on:
- the canton of employment — from CHF 215 to CHF 435 depending on where;
- age — a «child» allowance, then an «education» allowance at 16, with intermediate steps peculiar to Zurich and Lucerne (12) and to Zug (18);
- the child's rank — Fribourg, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel and Geneva raise the amount from the third child onwards.
In our family it is the three-year-old who is worth the most in Geneva: third in the sibling order, he opens an entitlement of CHF 411 while his elder siblings are worth CHF 311 and CHF 415.
And above all: the amount depends on the canton where you work, never on the one where you live. It is your employer’s compensation fund that pays. Two neighbours on the same landing in Nyon may receive CHF 1,112 or CHF 1,137 depending on whether they cross the cantonal border towards Lausanne or towards Geneva.
The 26 cantons at a glance
The map says two things at once: the shade is the amount; the hatching is the tax regime. The eight hatched cantons are those of the 1983 agreement, where a French cross-border worker is taxed in France — the allowance is added to net pay. Everywhere else it forms part of the withholding-tax base.
The detail, canton by canton
| Canton | CHF/month | 3rd-child uplift | Regime for French cross-border workers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valais | 1,239 | yes | France — net |
| Geneva | 1,137 | yes | at source — gross |
| Vaud | 1,112 | yes | France — net |
| Zug | 990 | — | at source — gross |
| Fribourg | 875 | yes | at source — gross |
| Basel-Stadt | 875 | — | France — net |
| Jura | 875 | — | France — net |
| Neuchâtel | 830 | yes | France — net |
| Nidwalden | 827 | — | at source — gross |
| Bern | 810 | — | France — net |
| Appenzell Innerrhoden | 788 | — | at source — gross |
| St. Gallen | 788 | — | at source — gross |
| Uri | 770 | — | at source — gross |
| Graubünden | 770 | — | at source — gross |
| Zurich | 751 | — | at source — gross |
| Schaffhausen | 750 | — | at source — gross |
| Lucerne | 743 | — | at source — gross |
| Schwyz | 740 | — | at source — gross |
| Appenzell Ausserrhoden | 740 | — | at source — gross |
| Aargau | 728 | — | at source — gross |
| Obwalden | 710 | — | at source — gross |
| Thurgau | 710 | — | at source — gross |
| Glarus | 698 | — | at source — gross |
| Solothurn | 698 | — | France — net |
| Basel-Landschaft | 698 | — | France — net |
| Ticino | 698 | — | at source — gross |
Median: CHF 770. Eighteen cantons out of twenty-six tax the allowance at source.
The underlying reason is structural: in Switzerland the family allowance is not a State benefit funded by taxation, it is an employer social charge, paid with the salary and administered by compensation funds. It is subject to no income test. An executive on CHF 200,000 receives exactly the same as a warehouse worker — and it is that absence of selectivity which explains the high level of the table.
Why France finishes last
France pays our family €423 if its income is modest. And €106 if it is that of a cross-border couple.
This is not a penalty aimed at cross-border workers. It is the French scale applied to a high income, and it rests on two clear political decisions.
Nothing before the second child. France pays no family allowance at all for an only child — where Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Luxembourg pay from the first. Our family has three children, so this point does not penalise it; but it says what the system is after: encouraging large families, not supporting every child.
Income testing since 2015. Since 1 July 2015 French family allowances have tapered across three bands. For three children, on 2024 earnings: full rate up to €86,644, half up to €113,268, a quarter above that.
- a single salary of CHF 100,000 (≈ €106,800): band 2 — €211.74 a month;
- two salaries taking the household above €113,268: band 3 — €105.86;
- modest income, below €86,644: band 1 — €423.45.
This is the shift from a universalist logic — the allowance as recognition of the cost of a child, whatever the income — to a redistributive one. The debate is legitimate and it was settled in 2015. But you have to know it before comparing two countries: France and Switzerland are not measuring the same thing.
Italy: the most radical case in the table
In 2022 Italy did what no one else had dared: it merged almost all its child benefits into a single gateway, the Assegno unico e universale, and tied it entirely to the ISEE — the Italian indicator of a household’s economic situation.
The result is arithmetically brutal. For 2026, after a 1.4% uprating:
- ISEE at the floor (up to €17,468.51): about €227 per child;
- ISEE above the ceiling (€46,582.71) or not filed: €58 per child.
A household with one parent working in Ticino is far above the ceiling. Our family therefore receives €174 a month, roughly what Valais pays for a single child — and Italy calls this «universal» because the entitlement exists for everyone, not because the amount is the same for everyone.
The word «universal» does not mean what you think
In Italy, «universale» means the benefit no longer depends on the parents' employment status — employed, self-employed, out of work, all come through the same door. That is a genuine gain in equality of access. But the amount remains heavily income-tested. Anyone who reads «universal» and infers «flat-rate» is out by a factor of four.
Spain and Portugal: the zero is not a misreading
Two countries in our table pay this family nothing. These are not gaps in our data collection: they are two political decisions, taken four years apart.
The Spanish ceiling, and where it puts our family
The CAPI still exists, and it is not reserved to recipients of the minimum living income alone: its thresholds are wider, and it can be drawn on its own. But they are thresholds of poverty, not of the middle class.
What you must not exceed to receive anything (Spain, 2026)
| Condition | Ceiling |
|---|---|
| Household income, CAPI alone | from €2,861 to €4,842 a month depending on composition |
| Household income, CAPI together with the minimum income | from €954 to €1,614 a month |
| Net assets (excluding main residence) | from €55,460 to €102,997 |
Our household is on €8,902 a month (CHF 100,000 a year). That is close to double the highest ceiling. It receives nothing — and does not even come near.
And here is the amount it will not receive. Were that same household below the ceiling, the CAPI would pay it €115 for the three-year-old, €57.50 for the fourteen-year-old and €57.50 for the seventeen-year-old, that is €230 a month. The full scale: €115 before age 3, €80.50 from 3 to 6, €57.50 from 6 to 18.
In other words, even at the floor Spain would pay €230 — a fifth of Luxembourg. The country has not merely narrowed access: it has also set the amount very low. It is a coherent choice — the money goes to child poverty, not to offsetting a cost — but it makes Spain last in the table at every income level.
Portugal: the same zero, through another door
Portugal has abolished nothing. It pays the abono de família across five income bands, and the fifth receives nothing.
The official Social Security guide sets out the method in four steps, and it is worth following because it is counter-intuitive:
How Portugal works out your band
- add up the annual income of every member of the household;
- count the number of children with an entitlement, plus one;
- divide the income by that number;
- the result gives the band, from 1 to 5.
For our family of three children you therefore divide by four — not by five. An income of €106,826 gives a reference income of €26,707.
⚠ It is not the number of people in the household. The parents do not count. The guide states: «conta-se o número de crianças e jovens com direito ao abono, mais 1» — you count the children with an entitlement, plus one unit. Three children therefore give four parts, not five. Dividing by five would drop the reference income to €21,365 and tip the family into a different band, and so a different amount.
The five Portuguese bands in euros (2026 income, 2024 IAS base)
| Band | Annual reference income | Allowance |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | up to €3,564.82 | the highest |
| 2nd | €3,564.82 → €7,129.64 | tapering |
| 3rd | €7,129.64 → €12,120.39 | tapering |
| 4th | €12,120.39 → €17,824.10 | the lowest |
| 5th | above €17,824.10 | nothing |
Our family is on €26,707 of reference income: fifth band, zero. To enter the scale at all it would need a total income below €71,296 a year — that is CHF 66,700 for two parents.
Two Portuguese rules that hit our family precisely
- The sibling supplement only applies to children of 36 months or less. Our youngest has just turned three: in an eligible Portuguese household he would drop out of the supplement in the month of his birthday.
- A lone parent receives 50% more across the first three bands — a far stronger uplift than anywhere else in the table.
These two countries are not cross-border cases. Neither Spain nor Portugal borders Switzerland or Luxembourg: they appear here as points of comparison, not as corridors. But they say something the other eight did not — how far the logic of targeting can go when it is pushed all the way.
The Netherlands: the third model, and a reading trap
The Netherlands pays the kinderbijslag with no income test, like Germany. But two details change everything.
It is paid PER QUARTER, not per month. The amounts published in the Staatscourant of 29 December 2025, in force since 1 January 2026, are €295.07 for a child under 6, €358.30 from 6 to 11 and €421.53 from 12 to 17 — per quarter. Our family therefore receives €1,138.13 every three months, that is €379 a month.
And the bulk of Dutch support lies elsewhere. Alongside the universal allowance sits the kindgebonden budget, markedly more generous — but income-tested, and it dies away for high incomes. The Netherlands is thus the hybrid of the two models: a modest universal base, a substantial redistributive storey above it. A well-off family sees only the base.
Luxembourg, Germany and Austria: three ways of being flat-rate
These three share the opposite principle to Italy: no income test. They diverge on everything else.
Luxembourg pays €315.04 per child, plus an age supplement: €23.81 from 6 to 11, €59.44 from 12 onwards. Our two eldest are therefore worth €374.48 each, the youngest €315.04 — €1,064 in total, the most generous outside Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The amounts follow the automatic wage indexation, which protects them from erosion by inflation. That is a European singularity.
Germany has chosen absolute simplicity: €259 per child per month since 1 January 2026, with no income test, no rank effect, no age step. Our family receives €777. Kindergeld is the same for the first child as for the fifth, for an unemployed person as for a surgeon.
Austria does exactly the opposite: it stacks the steps. €148 for the three-year-old, €171.80 for each of the elder two, plus a sibling supplement (Geschwisterstaffelung) of €21.10 per child from three children onwards — €554.90 in all. To which is added the Kinderabsetzbetrag, €70.90 per child: a tax credit paid monthly with the allowance, which most comparisons forget. With it, Austria goes from €555 to €768 and nearly doubles Belgium. Without it, it falls behind.
Belgium: four systems in one country
Belgium regionalised its family allowances in 2019. There are now four distinct regimes — Wallonia, Flanders, Brussels, the German-speaking Community — and, within each, two scales depending on the child’s date of birth.
In Wallonia the switch took place on 1 January 2020. Our family straddles it:
- the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, born before 2020, fall under the old regime, where the amount depends on rank — €121.50 for the eldest, €224.82 for the second — with age supplements;
- the three-year-old falls under the new Walloon regime: €196.57, whatever his rank.
Total: €639.62 a month. Had all three children been born after 2020, the family would receive €589.71; had all three fallen under the old regime, €778.71.
The reform reversed the winners
The new Walloon model pays a single amount per child, with no rank effect. The direct consequence: a first child receives more than before, a third a great deal less. A large Belgian family whose children were born before 2020 therefore has every interest in nothing changing — and that is precisely what the reform guarantees it.
Liechtenstein: generous, then brutal
Liechtenstein pays CHF 310 per child before the age of 10 and CHF 360 thereafter. But the rule that counts lies elsewhere: as soon as a household has more than two children with an entitlement, every child moves to CHF 360. Our family therefore receives 3 × 360 = CHF 1,080, fourth in the ranking.
Then comes the cliff. The entitlement ends on the child’s 18th birthday, with no extension for studies or an apprenticeship.
The cross-border case: it is not your country of residence that pays
Everything above compares national systems. For a cross-border worker the question changes completely — and the answer surprises many.
European regulation 883/2004, which Switzerland applies, designates a priority payer: the State where you work, as soon as the entitlement flows from employment. Your country of residence steps in only with a differential supplement, if its own amount were higher.
What that means in practice
- You live in Haute-Savoie and work in Geneva: you receive CHF 1,137 from the Swiss fund. The CAF pays nothing, since its own scale (€106) is far below.
- You live in Lombardy and work in Ticino: CHF 698 from Switzerland, and INPS tops up nothing.
- You live in Moselle and work in Luxembourg: €1,064 from Luxembourg, with no French supplement.
- You live in Vorarlberg and work in St. Gallen: CHF 788 from Switzerland, against €768 from Austria — the differential plays only at the margin, one way or the other depending on the exchange rate.
Put another way: crossing the border to work often multiplies the allowance by five or ten, without anything changing in your family. For a French couple with three children, the gap between €106 and CHF 1,137 comes to €12,372 a year — more than many households imagine they could gain by changing jobs.
The tax trap: this amount is not net
This is the point almost no comparison deals with, and it changes how the table reads.
In Switzerland the family allowance is paid by the employer, with the salary. It never forms part of the social-contribution base — on that point there is no ambiguity. But for tax, everything depends on your canton of employment.
And here is the counter-intuitive part. Many cross-border workers believe Geneva is a special case. It is the other way round.
Eight cantons tax in France. All the others tax at source.
The Franco-Swiss agreement of 11 April 1983 covers eight cantons: Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Jura, Bern, Solothurn, Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft. A French cross-border worker employed there is taxed in France: the family allowance is added to net pay and forms part of no tax base.
In every other canton — Geneva under the 1973 agreement, but also Fribourg, Zurich, Zug, Ticino, Aargau, St. Gallen, Lucerne, Graubünden and the rest — taxation is at source in Switzerland, and the allowance forms part of the base.
So the question is not «which cantons do what Geneva does». It is «is my canton one of the eight». If the answer is no, your allowance is taxed.
That shifts the ranking unevenly. Valais, top of the table with CHF 1,239, is a canton of the 1983 agreement: for a French cross-border worker those CHF 1,239 are added to net pay untaxed. Geneva shows CHF 1,137, but taxed at source. The real gap between the two cantons is therefore wider than the table shows — and it grows with income, since the scale is progressive.
Around Luxembourg, the same mechanism
Luxembourg employs some 230,000 cross-border workers from France, Belgium and Germany. The priority rule applies identically, and the gap there is less spectacular but still clear:
- French cross-border worker: €1,064 from Luxembourg against €106 from France. Ten to one;
- Belgian cross-border worker (Wallonia): €1,064 against €640. Luxembourg pays 66% more;
- German cross-border worker: €1,064 against €777. A gap of 37%.
On tax, the situation is simpler than in Switzerland: someone working in Luxembourg is in principle taxed there, and Luxembourg family allowances are not taxable. The headline amount is the amount banked — which is not the case in Geneva.
The objection that overturns the table: what about childcare for the youngest?
An attentive reader already has it in mind. Receiving CHF 1,137 in Geneva means nothing if the nursery place for the three-year-old costs more.
The objection is fair, and it is stronger than it looks — because it bears not on the price but on the age at which school starts.
At 3, the child is at school — except in the two countries at the top of the ranking
- France: pre-school compulsory and free from age 3 since the 2019 school year;
- Italy: scuola dell'infanzia, public and free from age 3;
- Belgium: free pre-school education from two and a half;
- Luxembourg: free éducation précoce from age 3, compulsory schooling at 4;
- Switzerland: compulsory school at 4 (HarmoS). At 3, the child is in a nursery;
- Liechtenstein: Kindergarten at 4. Same situation.
Put another way: the two countries that pay the most are also the two where the three-year-old remains entirely at the family’s expense. In France, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg the child is at school — the cost of care is absorbed by the public system, and the allowance, however small, is added to a free service.
So where is family policy most generous?
The question deserves rephrasing, because «generous» covers three different things.
Three rankings, three winners
- The gross amount for a well-off family: Valais, then Geneva, then Vaud. Switzerland takes the podium because it does not modulate by income.
- Redistributive effort: Italy and France. An Italian household at the ISEE floor receives €227 per child against €58 above the ceiling — a four-to-one ratio that goes far beyond anything Switzerland does for low incomes.
- Predictability: Germany. €259 per child, for everyone, no condition, no step, no income form. A system you can explain in one sentence has a value of its own.
So the real dividing line is neither north-south nor rich-poor. It sets two philosophies against each other:
The allowance as compensation for a cost. The child costs, the community offsets, regardless of income. That is Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg. Funding rests largely on employers or on general taxation, and the amount raises no question of desert.
The allowance as an instrument of redistribution. Public money goes to those who need it most. That is France since 2015 and Italy since 2022. The two countries that reformed most recently are also the two that chose this path — and they are the last two in our table, precisely because our benchmark family has a cross-border worker’s income.
There is no right side in that debate. There is a practical consequence: if you are a cross-border worker, you live on the side of the table where generosity is measured by the canton of employment, not by the country of residence.
What to check in your own situation
Four questions, in this order
- Which canton do you work in? Not where you live. It sets the scale, and the spread runs from CHF 698 to CHF 1,239 for three children.
- Is that canton one of the eight in the 1983 agreement? If so, your allowance is added to net pay. If not, it is taxed at source, and the headline amount is a gross.
- Does your canton pay more from the third child? Fribourg, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel and Geneva do. It can be worth CHF 100 a month.
- Are your children nearing an age threshold? 16 in Switzerland (switch to the education allowance), 18 in Liechtenstein (extinction), 20 in France, 25 in Switzerland. A birthday can be worth several hundred francs.
And one rule that holds for all eight countries: the family allowance is not always claimed automatically. In Switzerland it is your employer who files the claim with its compensation fund — but it will only do so if you have reported the birth and supplied the documents. A child born during the year and never reported is an allowance that never starts.
Frequently asked questions
Family allowances weigh more heavily on a choice of country than you think. The Relokea engine costs out your actual household — canton of employment, your children's ages, tax regime — and tells you what really lands in your account at the end of the month.
Official sources
- FSIO — Types and amounts of family allowances under the FamZG, the FLG and cantonal law 2026 (as at 12.12.2025) (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- service-public.gouv.fr — Allocations familiales: amounts uprated on 01.04.2026, income thresholds on 2024 earnings (factsheet F13213) (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Bundesagentur für Arbeit — Kindergeld of €259 per month per child from 1 January 2026 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Bundeskanzleramt (AT) — Familienbeihilfenbeträge: amounts by age, Geschwisterstaffelung, Kinderabsetzbetrag (2025-2027) (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- INPS — Assegno unico 2026: 1.4% uprating, ISEE thresholds of €17,468.51 and €46,582.71, amounts payable from February 2026 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- AHV-IV-FAK Liechtenstein — Kinderzulagen: CHF 310 before age 10, CHF 360 from age 10, CHF 360 per child beyond two children (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- AHV-IV-FAK Liechtenstein — Familienzulagen: entitlement until the child turns 18, differential supplement for cross-border workers (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- IGSS — Social parameters as at 1 June 2026: family allowance €315.04, age supplements €23.81 and €59.44 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- ECB — Euro reference exchange rates: EUR 1 = CHF 0.9361 on 25.08.2026 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Eurydice (European Commission) — Compulsory education in Europe: starting ages, France 3 since 2019, Switzerland 4, Luxembourg 4, Belgium 5 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- City of Geneva — Early-years childcare fees: income bands up to CHF 220,000, indexation on 01.08.2026 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Staatscourant 2025 no. 44508 (29.12.2025), SZW ministry — Mededeling gewijzigde bedragen AKW: kinderbijslag PER QUARTER from 01.01.2026, €295.07 / €358.30 / €421.53 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- BOE — Ley 19/2021 of 20.12.2021: abolition of the dependent-child benefit, folded into the minimum living income (complemento de ayuda para la infancia) (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Spanish Ministry of Inclusion — Complemento de Ayuda para la Infancia: restricted to households eligible for the minimum living income (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- Segurança Social (PT) — Abono de família: five income bands indexed to the IAS (€537.13 in 2026), the 5th receives nothing; sibling supplement limited to children under 3 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- ISS (PT) — Guia Prático Abono de família para crianças e jovens, v4.81 of 14.07.2026: calculation method, 5 bands in multiples of IAS × 14, 2024 IAS base = €509.26 (accessed on 27/08/2026)
- CLEISS — Regulation (EC) 883/2004, family benefits: priority of the State of employment and the differential supplement (accessed on 27/08/2026)
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