Living standards are estimated with the help of copula functions that simulate the joint distribution of income and age at death in a Monte-carlo framework. In a first step, only the income dimension is considered (upper curve), in a second scenario, individuals differ in their income but have a similar life expectancy, which is nonetheless lower than the reference life expectancy in Japan (middle curve), finally, individuals have different income and ages at death, and the latter two variables are considered as positively correlated in order to match the difference in life expectancy between the bottom and top quartiles of the income distribution, using van Raalte et al. ( Eventually, the latter correlation may evolve over the long term due to changes in policy settings (e.g. health or fiscal systems reforms) or to trends in adverse selection patterns (e.g. as chronic morbidity tends more often to yield, rather than derivate from, lower-income status). For a representative household earning the median income (i.e. with the parameter of aversion to inequality close to 1.5), income inequality involves a loss of 19% of income, versus 23% for inequality in ages at death.