The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between economic growth, terrorism, and human development index time spanning 1990-2016 for Pakistan. An empirical result from the autoregressive distributive lag model (ARDL) recommends that there exists an insignificant relationship between electric power consumption and human development process against our expectation. Besides, more interestingly, the findings show that economic growth does not contribute to human development in Pakistan. Furthermore, urbanization positively contributes to human development. Also, terrorism worsens the human development index. These novel findings of the study would help the government officials and policymakers towards the productive use of funds. It suggests the officials to encourage urbanization in such a way that promotes human development index.
Keywords: ARDL; Economic growth; Human development; Pakistan; Terrorism.