Abstract  We investigate the third-degree stochastic dominance order, which is receiving increasing attention in the field of inequality measurement. Observing that this partial order fails to satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern independence property in the space of random variables, we introduce the concepts of strong and local third-degree stochastic dominance, which do not suffer from this deficiency. We motivate these two new binary relations and characterize them in the spirit of the Lorenz characterization of the second-degree stochastic order, comparing our findings with the closest results in inequality literature.