I'm the son of Depression babies.  In fact, just visited my mom yesterday.  Their legacy is they always taught me about preparing for hard times.  

That said, my parents had two totally different experiences during the Depression.  My dad lived in the city and my mom on a farm.  My mom's family was pretty much self sufficient before the Great Depression so the impact wasn't near as harsh.  In fact most of my  early life my grandparents always had massive gardens, root cellar, smoke house, milk cows, made butter, etc.  Not many farms do that now.  My fathers family all would talk of doing without and scrambling weighing food against shelter and keeping a business afloat.  What they had in common was things like only one pair of shoes a year, hand me downs, etc. but where it was common in my mom's family, it was all new to my fathers.  My fathers family ate a lot of starch, a lot.  Starch is cheap.  

Anyway I always found the contrast of the two lifestyles during the Depression to be very enlightening.  

Tj