So far this book has described how from different starting points both France and the UK came to make extensive use of in-work benefits as part of their policy strategies to ‘make work pay’ and support low-income workers. This leads to a comparative question: what explains the process of qualified policy convergence in the use of IWBs in these two countries? As a counter-factual, why did governments not instead stick to pre-existing strategies of worker financial protection? This chapter cross-references the findings of the previous chapters to show how in each phase of reform there existed common factors fomenting a shared elite preference for IWBs and context-specific factors which shaped national specificities in policy design.