Abstract

Actually, when we talk about Social Vulnerability (SV) we mean a situation where uncertainty breaks into our certainties and preconceptions of security, which generates a series of breaks in micro-and macrosocial levels. This phenomenon is common in the process of modernization characterized by the instability and uncertainty towards present time and furthermore towards the future. In this context, the risk increase in various social areas, generates unexpected consequences both daily (micro) and in structural level (macro). Bearing this in mind, the social vulnerability is a rather complex concept within the Social Sciences, transforming it in an interesting phenomenon in theoretical and methodological areas. The following paper tries to explain the creation of a social vulnerability index from a theoretical and empirical perspective, as from now on, named IVS t / e. The form of construction of the IVS t / e will be based on three stages: 1) Description of what is understood and constructed under the name “theoretical index”. This, starting from 13 indicators (obtained from the survey CASEN 2000) that will conduct this research; 2) Encod- ings generation modalities (or categories) for the 13 indicators considered in the investigation; 3) Index construction, in general terms, to describe their behaviour with respect to variables such as “gender”, “job”, “activity”, “health insurance”, “income” and “schooling”.