Professor Jones is an applied microeconomist whose work focuses on evaluating the impacts of policies and interventions on gender equality and health. Her work estimates the impacts of access to contraception and abortion and the impacts of economic shocks on unintended fertility. She served as editor of the Oxford Handbook of Fertility and Reproductive Health Economics.

She has also designed and executed field experiments to study the economics of women's empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa. She has examined women’s risk coping strategies in the face of financial shocks and the implications for their sexual and reproductive health, as well as studying the role of gender dynamics in intra-household allocation of resources and productive activities, including women’s contributions to and empowerment within small-scale commercial agriculture.

Her work has been highlighted in several media outlets, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, among others, and she has served as an expert witness and as the lead author of an amicus brief for litigation related to her research.