You might look at something like the median life expectancy of a 65-year-old. That skips over a lot of early deaths that really bias the "average life expectanc

You might look at something like the median life expectancy of a 65-year-old. That skips over a lot of early deaths that really bias the "average life expectancy". For instance, you might find that in 1980 the median life expectancy at 65 was 25 years, and today that number might be higher. You'd still be getting a lot of lifestyle disease deaths though. Obesity and diabetes really grew after 1980. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti... It might be even better to look at median life expectancy at 70 or 75, if your idea is to gauge whether modern medicine is keeping people alive longer. Start with the group of people that at least made it that far. 70 or 75 is still probably too early for "died of old age" to happen, and those people are past most of the "died of something else" deaths.