About Kelly Jones

Kelly Jones is a former Senior Research Economist at IWPR and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at American University. She is the former co-Director of the Center on the Economics of Reproductive Health, which is housed at IWPR.

Dr. Jones is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on evaluating the impacts of various policies and interventions on gender equality and welfare. She teaches graduate courses on Impact Evaluation and has conducted numerous randomized-controlled trials in her research. Her recent work includes experimental analyses of women’s risk coping strategies in the face of financial shocks, and the implications for women’s sexual and reproductive health in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has also analyzed the impact of US foreign policy on women’s fertility outcomes internationally. Her new line of research focuses on the economic impacts of access to family planning in the U.S. Jones’s work has been highlighted in the New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Nation, CNBC, and Slate, among other outlets. Details of her research and a full listing of peer-reviewed publications can be found on her personal website.

Prior to joining IWPR, Dr. Jones was a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and prior to that earned a M.A. in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies at The John’s Hopkins University.