It's definitely true that it's the players with a little isk and experience that have it worst. They tend to be able to afford at most one replacement ship as the average new player trains for bigger ships much quicker than he can make the isk for them. I do think players are given a false impression of lowsec though. Missions in lowsec only pay marginally more and mining there isn't much better than highsec.

I think players are much better off sticking to highsec and joining a corp that will help them out and back them up. Not only can other members of a corp probably help you make isk a lot faster to replace any losses, the older players have a wealth of knowledge you can use to help avoid dying in the first place.