3 ideas
In a culture where honor is measured by open-handedness, hosting is not a choice but a standing obligation, and declining it counts as social failure. The costs of giving are therefore fixed by reputation, not by what the household can afford, and they do not shrink when income does.
When a household keeps up displays of abundance to hide or deny decline, it spends the reserves it would need to recover. The ritual meant to show resilience speeds up the collapse, and people keep it up because stopping would make the decline public.
Treat each meal served and each gift given as an entry in a social ledger, not as pure kindness. Seen this way, a household's generosity becomes a web of obligations it has taken on and expects repaid. This shows how solidarity networks can both protect families and trap them.