Signal Pandemic, war and chip-shortage shocks cascaded across education, poverty, energy, food and industry

Summary

The risk-chaining overview documents how recent shocks spread across sectors. The pandemic, which began as a health crisis, moved into lockdowns, supply-chain breakdowns and mass unemployment, disrupting learning for 1.6 billion students and pushing more than 100 million people into extreme poverty. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine disrupted energy supply and drove European natural gas prices up more than tenfold. Because the two countries account for about 30 percent of global wheat exports, halted grain shipments lifted food prices and triggered food crises in the Middle East and Africa. A pandemic-era surge in electronics demand combined with production disruptions caused a global semiconductor shortage that rippled into car plants, smartphones, appliances and used-car prices.