NEW DELHI: More than half the women who never get past school end up doing full-time house work. But nearly 95% of those who study till graduation or get a diploma escape the drudgery of domestic chores, says the Economic Survey 2020.Continuing education past school level dramatically improves the prospects of women to be employed, it says, expressing concern over declining female labour force participation ratio. Failure to acquire skills or attain the desired level of education keeps them out of the job market and ties them down to household chores for all their productive years , the Survey says.An analysis of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 shows that for the productive age group (15-59 years), only 5.3% of highly educated women (graduate and above) are engaged in full-time domestic duties while the figure for those educated up to secondary level is 54.6%.Worryingly, among women aged 30-59 who dropped out of school, the proportion of those doing domestic duties increased from 46% in 2004-05 to 65.4% in 2017-18. In the age group of 15-59 years, about 60% of women were outside the labour market, stuck to domestic duties, compared to less than 1% of males.The Economic Survey goes on to cite data share analysis, based on various rounds of NSO-Employment and Unemployment Survey and Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18 estimates. As per the data, female labour force participation ratio (LFPR) for productive age-group (15-59 years) shows a declining trend. Female labour force participation declined by 7.8 percentage points from 33.1% in 2011-12 to 25.3% in 2017-18. “To understand this trend, the activity status of females outside the workforce was examined separately for youth (15-29) as well as for the age groups (30-59 & 15-59),” it says.Female LFPR is higher in rural areas than urban areas, and rate of decline was also sharper in rural areas.In 2017-18, more men (10.5%) were unemployed than young women (3%). Proportion of youth in educational institutions has risen faster from 23% in 2004-05 to 38.5% in 2017-18 for young males, while for young women proportion almost doubled from 15.8% in 2004-05 to 30.3% in 2017-18.