This paper discusses whether the allocation of Swedish aid is dependent on absolute or relative poverty, and whether there is any difference in this respect between ODA and aid distributed through officially funded NGO?s. Given the Millennium Development Goals, and their overarching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, we should expect the aid allocation to be determined by absolute rather than relative poverty. We use OLS to estimate multiple linear regressions. We find that Swedish ODA has an absolute poverty focus, while the Swedish NGO aid rather seems to be concentrated on relative poverty. .