Introduction: Childhood is a very vulnerable stage in life. Child well-being, either directly or indirectly is affected by the status of households’ nutrition. Nutritional condition is an effective factor in weakening or strengthening the relationship between poverty and health in every household. Due to the importance of measuring nutrition poverty indices to inform planners  about the distributive effects of policy strategies as well as family and child welfare, this study tends to measure and analyze the trends of nutritional poverty of Iranian households with child from 1984-2012.

Method: In this trend study, statistical data on household socioeconomic characteristics (household income-cost design) has been used to measure food poverty among the households with child. To this end and to investigate households’ food caloric, this research used Foster, Greer and Thorbeck (FGT) index. STATA and Excel softwares were employed to do the calculations.  Findings: After dividing childhood into four age periods, nutrition poverty among households with child was examined in all of them. The results showed that in most age groups, the rate and severity of nutrition poverty had the highest values in 1989; also nutritional poverty of age group 0-5 years in the1989 entry year showed a reduced trend but in other entry years had some fluctuations. Compared to age groups, poverty rates among households with child belonging to age group 0-5 years, was lower than other age groups.

Discussion: Overall, nutritional poverty was high in all age groups and experienced large fluctuations. In most age groups, the rate and severity of poverty were highest during the First Development Plan. Research findings can have implications for policy makers regarding implementing efficient and effective policies in the field of child welfare.