These data were produced as part of the study "An empirical social vulnerability map (‘GlobE-SoVI’) for flood risk assessment at global scale" (currently in peer review). We provide raster data at 30 arc seconds spatial resolution (folder 'tif') and vector data per administrative unit (folder 'shp') of five social vulnerability variables and the final Global Empirical Social Vulnerability Index (GlobE-SoVI) calculated from the five variables. The code for data processing and analysis is available at https://github.com/lena-reimann/GlobE-SoVI [DOI]. File names and units are as follows: tif shp Variable file name unit column name unit Share of elderly percent_elderly percent eld_per percent Mean years of schooling (at age 25+) by gender MYS_gender years MYS_gen years Gender income gap income_gender percent inc_gap percent Share of villages villages Boolean village percent Maximum walking time to healthcare facility walk_healthcare_hours hours wlk_hrs hours GlobE-SoVI GlobE-SoVI index GlobE-SoVI index