The article summarizes the findings from 273 studies of the relationship between social status and criminal/delinquent behavior. The present review differs from others published on the same topic in recent decades partly in terms of comprehensiveness, both in terms of the total number of studies reviewed and in terms of efforts to include research from all countries, not just the United States and other English-speaking industrialized nations. The review suggests that individual social status is much more closely associated with criminal/delinquent behavior than is parental social status, particularly when offending behavior is persistent. Parental social status was found not to be significantly correlated with offending probabilities in the case of self-reported offenses. Most surprisingly of all was that not a single study of self-reported drug use was found that showed a significant negative correlation with parental social status; most studies reported a significant positive correlation. References