Social tension has many dimensions shaped by economic, social, and political factors. This paper provides a common methodology to model different sources of social tensions. It deals with dimensions of social tension that can be quantified using available data from household surveys. The different aspects of social tension considered are: (i) high inequality, (ii) existence of poverty, (iii) shrinking middle class and increased polarization, (iv) growth volatility, and (v) social immobility. This paper aims to derive social welfare functions that explicitly incorporate judgments about various types of social tension. Such social welfare functions provide the basis for the measurement of social tension. These social welfare functions are applied in Brazil’s case, with an empirical analysis of levels and trends of various types of social tension in the country from 1992 to 2012 using data from a national household survey.