1 Infrastructure Access and Human Development: Cross- Country Evidence and Post-2015 Development Strategies Jeet Bahadur Sapkota * Abstract Despite extensive policy discussion, there is limited empirical literature on the impacts of infrastructure on human development. Furthermore, major infrastructure services, such as transport and energy, are missing in the current MDGs framework; although there is a firm consensus that the infrastructure is the main vehicle in achieving the MDGs. Thus, this study assesses the impacts of several infrastructure variables (access to electricity, access to clean water sources, and road density) on human development index (HDI) and its three component indexes (i.e. health, education and income) using the panel data of 1995 to 2010 covering 91 developing countries. Dynamic panel estimation of General Methods of Moments (GMM) resulted that all the three infrastructure variables have significant positive impacts on HDI. However, access to electricity and access to water have positive and significant effect on education and health indexes only. On the other hand, road density is highly significant to increase the income index. These results clearly indicate the importance of infrastructure for human development process. However, current UN lead discussion on post-2015 development agenda failed to incorporate infrastructure comprehensively, although energy and water are included among the 11 themes for discussion. Therefore, it is argued that only integrated goals and targets with interlinked strategies and policies, which should be based on a comprehensive assessment of the whole infrastructure sector (not the isolation of its sub-sectors), can contribute poverty reduction and inclusive development efficiently. Because, without elimination of all types of infrastructure poverty (defined as “ lack of access to infrastructure services” ), it is almost impossible to eliminate human poverty, sustainably. Keywords : human development, infrastructure poverty, post-2015 development strategies, panel data * Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan (sapkota.jeet.gb@u.tsukuba.ac.jp)