A distributional approach to comparing vulnerability, applied to rural provinces in Thailand and Vietnam

► Vulnerability to poverty measures the risk of falling into, or staying in, consumption or income poverty in the future. ► The theory of stochastic dominance orders provides tools to establish ethically robust vulnerability comparisons. ► The vulnerability to poverty in six rural provinces in Thailand and Vietnam is compared. ► In the poorest provinces, vulnerability to poverty is unambiguously larger in Vietnam than in Thailand.