The poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid: A comparative analysis

This article considers the poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid from a comparative perspective. Using data on aid disbursements to 106 developing countries between 2010 and 2012, it constructs aid concentration curves for Sweden, three other major bilateral donors and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Sweden's bilateral aid is shown to be less poverty and deprivation focused than the aid programmes of Denmark and the United Kingdom, but more progressive than those of the United States and the DAC. While Sweden does well in targeting its aid to low-income countries, around half of its priority development cooperation partners are small middle-income countries in which relatively few poor or deprived people live. There is therefore scope to improve the poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid in the future.