Demography is not destiny As Giacomo Casanova explained over two centuries ago ' There is no such thing as destiny We ourselves shape our own lives' Today we are shaping them & our societies more than ever before Globally we have never had fewer children per adult our population is about to stabilize though we do not know when or at what number or what will happen after that It will be the result of billions of very private decisions influenced in turn by multiple events & policies some more unpredictable than others More people are moving further around the world than ever before we too often see that as frightening rather than as indicating greater freedom Similarly we too often lament greater ageing rather than recognizing it as a tremendous human achievement with numerous benefits to which we must adapt Demography comes to the fore most positively when we see that we have choices when we understand variation & when we are not deterministic in our prescriptions The study of demography has for too long been dominated by pessimism & inhuman simplistic accounting As this fascinating & persuasive overview demonstrates how we understand our demography needs to change again