In line with earlier research, the authors propose a family process model that indirectly links economic hardship to depressed mood of young adolescents via the parental perception of economic pressure, an increase of parental depressed mood, and the deterioration in positive family climate. The model was tested with samples of young adolescents and their parents who had lived in former East and West Germany in 1993. The mediation model predicted interindividual differences in adolescents' depressed mood in the West but not in the East. The regional differences in responses to economic hardship are interpreted as rooted in different personal attributions of and public attitudes toward the causes of hardship.
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