The cost of poor math skills

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (UK) presents the news of a new report about "The long term cost of numeracy difficulties". The report concludes that poor skills in mathematics ends up costing the society an enormous amount of money. BBC reports:

Children who are bad at maths at school end up costing the taxpayer up to £2.4bn a year, a report suggests.

Head of distrubution and product at Barclays, Mike Amato said to BBC:

We are very conscious that every child needs basic numeracy skills for survival.

This is also discussed in The Times and other sources. A key message is that spending money on mathematics education will save us a lot of money in the future.

If you have more information on this, links to other sources, similar studies in other countries, etc., feel free to leave a comment!