It is sometimes argued that poverty is multi-dimensional and that the borderline between the poor and the non-poor is vague. In this paper fuzzy set theoretic poverty measures are used to examine vulnerability and ‘definite poverty’ in various dimensions of the quality of life. The focus of the paper is on inter-provincial rankings in these dimensions at the time of the 1996 Census in South Africa. While various methodological difficulties are noted, the analysis suggests that the distinction between human and financial poverty, and that between definite poverty and extreme vulnerability, are important for policy, in particular as regards the inter-provincial distribution of funds.