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It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in the configuration of educational expectations. Cultural Capital Theory argues that participation in the dominant culture at schools, the endowment of educational resources and the development of skill-generating habits contribute to holding ambitious expectations over and above performance. In Rational Action Theory, students form expectations at each level of performance by gathering information, pondering benefits and costs, and evaluating the risk of academic failure and social demotion, which in turn might account for the secondary effect of social origin. Relying on Spanish data from 2018 PISA, I observe that Cultural Capital and Rational Action mechanisms are compatible in the explanation of the secondary effects of social origin, although two-thirds of that inequality remain unexplained. Nonetheless, I find differences in how those mechanisms perform in vertical (whether to enrol an educational level) and horizontal expectations (what alternative is preferred in that educational level). • Inequality is larger in horizontal than in vertical expectations. • Relative Risk Aversion mechanism mediates secondary effects of social origin. • Highbrow culture participation generates inequality over and above performance. • Skill-generating cultural capital mediates secondary effects in vertical expectations. • The number of sources of information works as a suppressor in horizontal expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an evaluation protocol that permits evaluating the relative performance of a set of populations in a multidimensional context when outcomes are measured in terms of categorical variables. This problem appears in many different fields, such as Medicine, Social Sciences, or Engineering. The key ingredient for this evaluation is comparing the likelihood of achieving higher performance levels in the different dimensions. This way of addressing this family of problems derives from extending the balanced worth (Herrero and Villar, 2018) to a multidimensional setting. This evaluation protocol is illustrated by means of two empirical applications regarding life satisfaction in Europe and multidimensional poverty measurement in Spain. • We provide a methodology to compare the relative performance of different societies in a multidimensional context. • It can be applied to categorical data, either qualitative or quantitative. • It is based on the relative likelihood of having better results in pairwise comparisons. • A free online algorithm making instantaneous computations is available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]