Anecdotes from growing up in the rural US. In high school:

- We went through three math teachers one year because they could find less stressful, better-paying work as accountants.

- My AP Stats teacher had to work weekends at Best Buy.

Anecdote from my rural area. The last few math teachers eventually switched over to being the librarian or home economics teacher. Because it paid exactly the same but the curriculum was much easier to teach and isn't subject to the stresses and rigors of standardized testing.

That was my thought. I wonder what the backgrounds are of Russian teachers/professors of mathematics? I do not know oodles of math teachers, but all of my teachers as a kid, and friends who teach math now, received a four year degree on mathematics and went right in to teaching. They were very uninspiring (career-wise) people, with little knowledge of how math is applied outside of a high-school/university context.

So a society with a paucity of math skilled people means less teachers with math skills which perpetuates the cycle?