<p>Although several studies have analyzed human development through income and environmental factors, there have been very few studies that have examined the linkage between globalization, public debt, and human development. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the existing gap between public debt, globalization, and human development by considering the role of remittances and urbanization. This study is the first to examine the impact of globalization and public debt on human development in the specific context of Pakistan. The study utilizes an advanced Auto-Regressive Distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to assess the short- and long-run relationship between the selected variables, covering the period from 1990 to 2022. The findings reveal that public debt hurts human development, while remittances significantly contribute to human development. Additionally, the relationship between globalization and human development is insignificant. Moreover, the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) Granger causality analysis confirms long-term causality between globalization, remittances, and human development. Finally, these innovative findings suggest important policy implications for sustainable human development.</p>