Identifying and addressing social vulnerability is an integral element of disaster risk reduction efforts. A range of quantitative approaches have been proposed to measure vulnerability in different contexts, guiding the scale of research and the selection of indicators. To fully understand the interplay between hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, the approach of social vulnerability measurement must be validated against the actual impacts of natural hazards in various locales. However, studies that are highly localized have difficulty capturing the common characteristics of societies and comparable factors that shape social vulnerability at a larger scale, making global comparisons impossible. This study will investigate global social vulnerability to natural hazards using subnational data for a large number of countries. Various sources of demographic and socio-economic data were employed to construct a social vulnerability index (SVI). The index was validated with actual impact of natural disasters using a second dataset. Results show that socio-economic development and population structure mainly summarize social vulnerability characteristics, while education has the strongest negative effect on total death. Further investigations in identifying subnational subgroups and construct a second set of SVI incorporating more data is required.