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Among the four types of drought, socioeconomic drought, which has a direct impact on human production and daily life, is the least understood. The current socioeconomic drought index proposed by Mehran et al. (2015) is the Multivariate Standardized Reliability and Resilience Index (MSRRI), which combines information on inflowdemand reliability and water storage resilience. The MSRRI resolves the problem of difficult quantification of socioeconomic drought. However, the MSRRI also has some flaws such as ignoring reservoir dispatching regulations and the relationship between water supply and water demand. Therefore, this study aims to improve the MSRRI through combining reservoir operation processes and actual water supply and demand and proposing an improved MSRRI (IMSRRI). The upper Yellow River Basin (UYRB) was selected as a case study, and comparison between the MSRRI and IMSRRI was conducted. The evolution characteristics of the IMSRRI series in the UYRB were examined. Additionally, cross-wavelet analysis was utilized to reveal the associations between the IMSRRI series and climate factors. Results indicated that: (1) compared with the MSRRI, the IMSRRI could capture the onset and termination of socioeconomic drought more accurately and reasonably due to the fusion of reservoir scheduling characteristics at a smaller timescale; (2) the socioeconomic drought in the UYRB had dramatically changed during the past few decades (the IMSRRI series showed a significantly decreasing trend and two change points (1995 and 1975) were captured); and (3) the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Oscillation (AO) showed significant influences on the short period (the influences of ENSO were stronger than AO), while sunspots had the strongest impacts on the long period.