In its broadest sense, social vulnerability is one dimension of vulnerability to multiple stressors and shocks, including abuse, social exclusion and natural hazards. Social vulnerability refers to the inability of people, organizations, and societies to withstand adverse impacts from multiple stressors to which they are exposed. These impacts are due in part to characteristics inherent in social interactions, institutions, and systems of cultural values.

Social vulnerability is an interdisciplinary topic that connects social, health, and environmental fields of study. As it captures the susceptibility of a system or an individual to external stressors such as pandemics or natural disasters, social vulnerability is a focus of many studies in the risk management literature.

The structural nature, as opposed to the individual level, is central to social vulnerability. Social and political systemic inequalities influence or shape the susceptibility of various groups to harm as well as govern their ability to respond. Both the sensitivity and resilience of a group to prepare, cope, and recover from hazards define their social vulnerability.

Although considerable research attention has examined components of biophysical vulnerability and the vulnerability of the built environment, we once knew the least about the social aspects of vulnerability. Socially created vulnerabilities were largely ignored, mainly due to the difficulty in quantifying them.

Researching social vulnerability is interdisciplinary, combining theories from sociology, health, political economy, and geography. Just like the different disciplines use different approaches and scopes of analyses (qualitative or quantitative; different objects/groups of analysis; different types of hazards/stressors), so too did the early versions of attempting to quantify social vulnerability.

Since the 1960s, there have been methods for collecting and quantifying data to depict a community's social conditions and quality of life. Within the geography discipline, spatially quantifying social problems and social well-being has been practiced since the 1970s. At the same time, Phil O'Keefe, Ken Westgate, and Ben Wisner introduced the concept of vulnerability within the discourse on natural hazards and disasters, emphasizing the role of socio-economic conditions as causes of disasters. Susan Cutter's 2003 social vulnerability index was a turning point in studying social vulnerability. The index and hazard of place model was built upon the decades-before groundwork and synthesized the interdisciplinary challenges and goals of measuring vulnerability. As of March 2024, Cutter's original paper has been cited over 7,500 times, suggesting its influence across fields and potential replication of its methodology in different contexts.

It is important to consider, however, that analyses focusing on stress-to-vulnerability are insufficient for understanding the impacts on and responses of affected groups. These issues are often underlined in attempts to model the concept (see Models of Social Vulnerability).

"Vulnerability" derives from the Latin word vulnerare (to wound) and describes the potential to be harmed physically and/or psychologically. Vulnerability is often understood as the counterpart of resilience, and is increasingly studied in linked social-ecological systems. The Yogyakarta Principles, one of the international human rights instruments, uses the term "vulnerability" to refer to such potential for abuse or social exclusion.