The present research, which is the first of its kind in Iran, started with the question: 'what things have affected the lives of poor families in particular, and the poverty of Iran in general?' The families who have been studied in this research belong to the low strata of Iranian society, and are protected by the Emdad Imam Khomaini Committee. Information and data have been collected through observation, interviews, questionnaires, and then analysed by both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that the families are poverty stricken due to the influence of individual, social and environmental factors, which directly or indirectly influence poverty.