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Whereas it is widely acknowledged that Western economies showed very strong improvement in survival conditions during the last two centuries, no consensus exists on how these changes should be incorporated into an aggregated indicator of standards of living. In fact, the most widespread indicator, the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI), has been widely criticized on the grounds of the arbitrary nature of the weights on which it relies. This paper introduces an alternative indicator, namely a longevity-adjusted measure of consumption, and shows via various applications the added value contributed by that indicator to the measurement of living standards in space and time. Various methodological issues raised by the construction of this indicator are also examined since they constitute challenges for future research.