Introduction: Food security is one of the fundamental pillars of sustainable development and social welfare. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security exists when all people have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food at all times. Among its four dimensions, economic access to food has gained increasing attention because household purchasing power largely determines the ability to obtain adequate food. Even when food is physically available, rising prices and declining real incomes may limit households’ access to nutritious diets. The share of food expenditure in total household expenditure is widely used as an indicator of economic access to food. Based on Engel's Law, households with lower income allocate a larger proportion of their budgets to food, whereas this share declines as income increases. Therefore, a higher food expenditure share reflects greater economic pressure, lower purchasing power, and weaker access to food. Macroeconomic policies play an important role in shaping household food affordability. Expansionary monetary policy may increase inflation and food prices through excessive money supply growth, while fiscal policy can improve household welfare through public expenditure, social protection, and income support. In addition, variables such as food inflation, unemployment, income inequality, and real income significantly influence household purchasing power and food accessibility. Iran provides an important context for examining these relationships because the country has experienced persistent inflation, rapid money supply growth, declining real incomes, rising unemployment, and widening income inequality over recent decades. These conditions have increased the financial burden of purchasing food and reduced household welfare. Despite numerous government interventions, empirical evidence on the simultaneous effects of monetary and fiscal policies on economic access to food remains limited. Accordingly, this study investigates the long-run and short-run impacts of monetary and fiscal policies on households’ economic access to food in Iran.