Living conditions for ordinary Iranians are getting tougher as war and sanctions add to years of economic strain.

Officials have introduced higher wages and food vouchers to try and shield low-income households, but many Iranians say the measures are failing to keep up with rising prices.

In March, the monthly minimum wage in Iran was raised by 60%, or 166 million rials ($120, €104). However, for many households, the most visible sign of the crisis is not a headline inflation figure, but the speed with which ordinary prices change.

One Tehran resident told DW that the price of rice went up 9% within two weeks. Other items like ice cream saw similar hikes. Prices are climbing week by week, while salaries are adjusted only once a year.

Officials say a food voucher scheme is meant to ease the burden on households. But many Iranians argue that the support has not kept pace with prices.

The same Tehran resident said that since the food voucher policy was introduced, chicken prices had more than doubled, while milk had gone up nearly 50%. The voucher itself, the resident said, remained unchanged.

Some households, if they have any savings left, buy food, detergents and hygiene products in bulk and store them at home before prices rise again.

Full shelves, empty pocketbooks

The war with the US and Israel has exacerbated Iran's ongoing economic problems. As a resolution to the conflict seems far off, the supplies of oil, gas and fertilizer remain disrupted.

That matters for Iranian households because when fuel, transport and imports become more expensive, the costs ripple outward.

The result is an economy in which abundance and deprivation can exist side by side. Shelves may still be stocked, but for a growing number of people, prices are growing out of reach. For many consumers, the immediate problem is not that shops are empty. It is that purchasing power has collapsed.

Even when the state raises the minimum wage, it matters little in a market where prices move weekly, subsidies lose value quickly and ordinary families are forced to measure their lives in half-kilos, smaller baskets and harder choices.

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A supermarket owner in Iran said that he has seen every day how prices move up far faster than what people can afford.

Customers who once bought several kilograms of rice now buy far less than they used to. He said people are no longer able to buy even necessities in normal quantities.

Due to years of rampant inflation, prices of ordinary goods in Iran are often sold in "tomans" rather than the official "rial." A toman is worth 10 rials, and when you consider that a kilogram of rice goes for 3 million rials, boiling it down to tomans makes everyday transactions easier to handle

However, as the rial remains Iran's official currency, there is a longstanding gap between the official unit used in government and banking documents and the unit commonly used by the public in daily life.

The bleakest moments, the shopkeeper said, come when children walk into the shop and ask for something that costs 10,000 tomans. Finding anything at that price has become almost impossible. He told DW that in all his years in business, he had never seen people so desperate to buy the most basic things.

The high cost of keeping fed

Arzoo Karimi, a London-based economic analyst, told DW that the monthly cost of securing the minimum calories required for one person has now exceeded 7 million tomans ($39.00), based on figures from the Statistical Center of Iran.

In her view, that means food alone can consume more than 70% of the income of a three-person household, leaving little or nothing for rent, healthcare or education.

Karimi told DW that it is misleading for Iranian authorities to talk about the abundance of essential goods on store shelves if people cannot afford to buy them.

She argues that because rent, medicine and health expenses often take priority over food, households are forced to cut their diets step by step. Protein goes first, then dairy, and now even carbohydrates and ordinary bread are becoming a serious daily challenge for many families.

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