What About Poverty? : A multidimensional approach to the poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid

This study examines the poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid and if a multidimensional poverty measure has an effect on the selection of Swedish strategy countries within Sida’s bilateral aid program. Sweden, while generally seen as an altruistic donor, has been noted to allocate resources to relatively richer countries as a result of its wider aim with ODA such as democratic progress and human rights protection. To analyze the relationship between Swedish bilateral aid and poverty, we use concentration curves and a logistic regression for the year of 2016 for Sweden’s strategy countries. The regressions are performed using two measures of poverty, the Multidimensional Poverty Index and extreme monetary poverty (1.9$/day), controlling for institutional and strategic factors. The results for Sweden’s bilateral aid program show a slight poverty focus in terms of multidimensional poverty, as well as tendencies to focus on consistency, geopolitics and comparative advantages. There is no significant relationship between strategy countries and degree of monetary poverty. The results are largely aligned with Swedish policy objectives.