DOWNSHIFTERS
In 1995, Harvard Economist Juliet Schor and the Merk Family Fund surveyed eight hundred American adults. They discovered that 28% had downshifted their lifestyles in order to experience more quality in their lives. According to the survey, getting off the fast track is becoming more and more popular with baby-boomers, particularly those over thirty years of age. According to Schor, these people want “more time, more balance, a saner pace of life, and less stress… the American dream is no longer attainable or even desirable, so they are looking for more meaning, and they are cutting back.” Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, New York estimates that about 5% of the seventy-six million American baby boomers are downshifting to simpler lifestyles. Not all of these downshifters become so by choice. “A lot of people are cutting back because they are forced too. What is happening though, is that they are finding out that it’s a much better way to…
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