"I was looking for some sort of study which could support or deny the assertion."

This wasn't a study, per se, but it may help our understanding of the human psyche.

Years ago when I was in university I took an anthropology course. The professor was a great guy, great sense of humour. Some friends of his were doing a dig at a garbage dump. As they cleared layer after layer (season after season and year after year) of garbage from various areas of the dump they found a disproportionate number of t-bone steak bones in layers from the early 1980s, a time of economic depression in Canada. People were having it tough. Anyway, the various anthropology profs and students on the dig enlisted the thoughts of sociologists and economists at the U of Alberta (and I think elsewhere) to come up with answers as to why an expensive cut of meat like that was being barbequed so frequently when cash was tight. Why not more chicken bones because chicken was inexpensive? Why not more cans of beans in the layers? The picture didn't add up--sorry to mix the metaphor.

What they came up with makes sense. People were 'putting on the Ritz' to save face in front of their neighbours. I expect some of that type thinking may be at play. Just a guess, but maybe a good one.