even though the depression was over (?) there were always poor people. during the war, women worked in factories and in the 40's there were still homesteaders in places the government wanted populated. there were loads of government public-works projects like damns that tried to ease the load by creating jobs. what you're seeing is not the depression itself, but the left-over poverty that the tapering off of the depression was unable to address.
actually, if you lived on your family-owned farm and had veggies and farm animals, you were probably better off than city people who couldn't pay rent or buy food.