Human development is one of the most important indicator for the development of any county or region. One of the important driver of human development is social sector expenditure. In this line, the present paper investigates the effectiveness of the social sector expenditure on human development in sixteen non-special category states, using the data from 1990-91 to 2017-18. In addition, this paper evaluates the efficiency of social expenditure policy from a human development perspective by undertaking a panel regression analysis. The study finds that per capita social sector expenditure and per capita income is the significant determinant of HDI. However, per capita social sector expenditure is relatively more effective than per capita income. The reason could be that the social sector expenditure is a more focussed expenditure on education and health which is the two most important determinants of HDI.