I think you raise a very valid point here, I've only been on steemit for a week so have a very much "newbie" opinion on this.

I think I could fairly broadly categorise the posts that I've seen so far on steemit into a few categories.

• Cat. 1. High quality content by native / proficient native speakers (in whichever language they post in), well formatted and well presented - $$$$$
• Cat. 2. Good quality content but poorly presented and/or formatted - $$$
• Cat. 3. Average quality content but well presented and/or formatted - $$
• Cat. 4. Poor content with poor presentation, only posted to spam links to try and gain upvotes - $

Category 1 are the most successful and most likely to stick around for the longest.

Category 2 will likely see some initial success but if they don't improve their formatting / presentation will slip down to category 3.

Category 3 will have a few people rise up and go through to category 2, and then possibly category 1. But most will simply either stay in category 3 or leave the platform.

Category 4 consists of people who are likely to stay for up to 2 weeks, realise they can't make a "quick buck" and leave the platform altogether.

I think a lot of people in the higher cost-of-living countries as you say have many more opportunities to make more reliable income than learning to move up from category 3, or category 2 to reach the top category, and the amount of money required to make this a worthwhile use of their time.

Just my 2 cents :)