Welcome to Demography Matters.  Demography Matters is a loose network of demographers, economists, and other social scientists who share a number of ideas in common:

• that the current demographic changes occuring across our planet are important, and their consequences insufficiently well understood, by any of us.
  
• that the process which is know as 'ageing' is not a problem but a great potential gain for all of us.  It does however present us with a great challenge on the institutional level. We, as individuals, mediate our relations with others through institutions, and if these institutions do not adapt, or do not adapt rapidly and flexibly enough, then this great potential boon can in fact be transformed into an equally great  problem.
• that the process known as ageing is composed of two components, a fertility and a life expectancy one. Increasing life expectancy naturally produces ageing, and as such an ageing society is a healthy one. The second component, the fertility decline, also produces ageing, however in this case the process may be considered a disruptive one if the fall below replacement fertility occurs too rapidly producing in its wake major structural damage in the population pyramid.
• that ageing itself not only is not a problematic phenomenon it is also not a new a particularly new one,  since the median ages of all societies who have entered the fertility decline stage of the demographic transition have subsequently been  rising steadily and continuously.
• that ageing if it is to be an adequately managed process requires a vigorous response on many levels, economic, social, political, institutional and individual.