This paper conducts an analysis of the socioeconomic determinants of Vietnam’s crossprovincial
variations in natural disaster vulnerability. The purpose is twofold: (i) to capture
disaggregated vulnerability variations normally obscured by national statistics, thereby providing
more nuanced insights into Vietnam’s vulnerability to natural disasters; and (ii) to take advantage of
the fact that the overall political system and key institutional structures to a large extent are constant
across Vietnam’s provinces, which makes the analysis a novel addition to the many disaster studies
based on cross-national variations. The paper’s analysis indicates that much of Vietnam’s crossprovincial
variations in natural disaster fatalities and economic costs can be explained by differences
in key socioeconomic factors. High provincial rates of inequality, poverty and infant mortality, for
instance, appear to drive up natural disaster fatalities. Local adaptation efforts should focus as much
on these broader socioeconomic dimensions as they focus on the geophysical susceptibility to
natural hazards of individual areas.