Conflict-imposed mobility restrictions can disrupt access to care, but their health consequences are rarely estimated with credible counterfactuals. This paper studies weekly sit-at-home mandates enforced across Southeast Nigeria since 2021 by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). These mandates regularly restricted transport, markets, schools, and routine economic activity across the region. Using birth histories from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys, I estimate their effect on neonatal mortality, defined as death within the first 28 days of life. The empirical strategy compares rural births in treated Southeast states with rural births in neighboring South-South states before and after the onset of institutionalized enforcement. The rural focus is motivated ex ante by the three-delays framework, which links maternal and newborn survival to timely care-seeking, transport, and facility access. The shutdowns increased neonatal mortality by 1.6 to 1.8 percentage points, equivalent to about 16 to 18 additional neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births. Mechanism evidence points to reduced facility delivery and lower healthcare contact among rural mothers. The estimates are robust to alternative specifications, including a monthly design that absorbs seasonality. The findings provide new causal evidence that conflict-imposed restrictions can generate sizable early-life health costs by disrupting access to care in fragile settings.
While place-based economic interventions—from special economic zones to industrial plants—have been extensively studied, less is known about how establishing universities shapes comprehensive local labor market outcomes. This gap is particularly acute in developing contexts where tertiary education is scarce, labor markets are predominantly informal, and the mechanisms linking educational infrastructure to local development may differ fundamentally from those in developed economies. We provide causal evidence using Nigeria's 2011 establishment of nine federal universities in previously underserved states. Employing a difference-in-differences design with household survey data (2010-2019), we find that university placement increased employment by 27.9 percentage points and wages by 52 percent—effects substantially larger than those of prior place-based interventions. Heterogeneity analysis reveals striking distributional patterns: women gain 33 percentage points, while men decline by 10 percentage points; youth (15-35) experience a 58 percentage-point increase, while older workers experience a 79 percentage-point decrease. Urban areas capture most benefits. Crucially, while aggregate employment surged, formal employment declined modestly, with growth concentrated in self-employment, agriculture, and NGO sectors. These findings demonstrate that universities function as powerful local economic catalysts in low-income settings, though primarily through informal channels and demand spillovers rather than formal job creation, with important implications for education-led development policy