Abstract: During past several decades, the prevalence of childhood autism has rocketed around the world, and thereby an increasing number of studies on the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with childhood autism were conducted. After teasing apart current situation of studies in this field, we pointed out the gap in researches between developed countries and China. Afterwards, from five aspects including interaction between gene and environment, we reviewed pathways and mechanism of impact of SES on the development of autism in children and provided suggestions with regard to conducting related studies in China in the future.