Official's pension insurance period

Verified 01 January 2025 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)

The amount of your pension depends in particular on your pension insurance period. The duration of pension insurance mainly includes periods worked and paid in. But it also includes periods when you have interrupted or reduced your business. We present you with the information you need to know.

Video - My career and pension rights at a glance

Vidéo - My career and my pension rights

Disabled video

You need to accept cookies to play the video

Accept Cookies

Credits : Public interest grouping "Union retirement"

What is a quarter in most basic pension plans?

The duration of insurance is expressed in quarters.

At most it is possible to validate 4 quarters per year.

The validation of a quarter does not depend on the actual duration of the work but on the income received and more precisely on the amount of income subject to contribution.

Imagine a student who works 35 hours a week at minimum wage in August.

This revenue can be used to validate a quarter.

How do I know how many quarters I have?

By creating your personal space on our website www.lassuranceretraite.fr, you can directly access your career statement with all the quarters acquired since the beginning of your activity.

There are also tools to get estimates of how much you will retire.

Which quarters are considered for my retirement?

When retiring, to determine your insurance term, we take into account different types of quarters:

Contributed quarters that resulted in contributions being paid
Accident at work The so-called assimilated quarters which correspond to periods of interruption of work: unemployment, sickness, invalidity, maternity, military service and, for employees only,
And the quarters that can be granted to you, especially if you have had or raised one or more children, if you have had a disabled adult as your dependant, or for employees only if you have a prevention professional account.

An assimilated quarter or a granted quarter has the same value as a contributed quarter to determine your insurance term.

Contributed quarters, assimilated quarters and granted quarters account in the same way.

However, the calculation of retirement also takes into account the best years of income.

A break in work can therefore have an impact on the amount of your pension.

Attention: some schemes nevertheless require a minimum period of insured contributions, such as early retirement for a long career.

For more information, visit www.lassuranceretraite.fr

The duration of pension insurance refers to the periods of your working life during which you build up pension rights.

Pension insurance term is recorded in quarters.

Your number of pension insurance quarters is one of the taken into account for calculate your pension amount.

To be eligible for a full-rate pension, you must either have a specified number of quarters of pension insurance or retire at age 67, regardless of the number of quarters.

The number of quarters required to qualify for a full-rate pension before age 67 depends on your year of birth:

Tableau - Sedentary category official - Conditions for full rate retirement
You were born:	You can retire from:	Number of quarters required to have the full rate	Auto Full Rate Age
Between 1^er January 1958 and December 31, 1960	62 yrs	167 (41 years 9 months)	67 yrs
Between 1^er January 1961 and August 31, 1961	62 yrs	168 (42 years)	67 yrs
Between 1^erSeptember 1961 and December 31, 1961	62 years and 3 months	169 (42 years 3 months)	67 yrs
In 1962	62 years and 6 months	169 (42 years 3 months)	67 yrs
In 1963	62 years and 9 months	170 (42 years 6 months)	67 yrs
In 1964	63 yrs	171 (42 years 9 months)	67 yrs
In 1965	63 years and 3 months	172 (43 years)	67 yrs
In 1966	63 years and 6 months	172 (43 years)	67 yrs
In 1967	63 years and 9 months	172 (43 years)	67 yrs
From 1^er january 1968	64 yrs	172 (43 years)	67 yrs

If you retire before the age of 67 without the required number of quarters, the amount of your pension is reduced according to the number of quarters you are missing. This reduction is called a discount.

Please note

If you are a public servant of active category, the insurance periods for obtaining a full rate pension and the automatic full rate age, regardless of the insurance period, are different.

If you have worked in sectors other than the public service and contributed to several pension funds, this is your total insurance duration, all schemes, which is taken into account in determining whether or not you are entitled to full-rate retirement pensions.

The periods of your working life during which you build up pension entitlements are firstly the periods of work and retirement :

Services performed as an official (incumbent and trainee)
Services performed as a magistrate of the judiciary
Services performed as a public servant prior to integration into the public service
Services performed as a contract having been validated as official services
Services performed as a staff member of overseas communities and New Caledonia
Military services
For teachers, time spent in normal school from the age of 18.

All periods of paid leave are taken into account: maternity leave, sick leave, etc.

The periods completed part-time shall be taken into account as if they were periods completed full time.

For example, a year worked part-time part-time counts for one year of pension insurance (not for six months).

Periods completed on a non-full-time or incomplete employment shall be taken into account for their actual duration.

If you have children, you are also entitled to additional insurance quarters based on certain situations.

If you are a teacher in the 1^er or the second degree, the periods during which you received teaching allowances and the 1^e year spent in a university training institute Masters as a beneficiary are taken into account, for half, if you have been tenured in a corps of teachers.

You must ask taking these periods into account in the administration to which you report at the time of your request or, if this is not possible, in the last administration to which you report.

You have to make your request not later than 12 months before the date you want to retire.

If you've made any studies in higher education, you can under certain conditions have them validated for your pension insurance term.

You can view your career statement, which summarizes your pension insurance duration, on the Retirement Info site from your retirement account.

If you have worked in sectors other than the public service, your career statement provides a chronological summary of all your different periods of employment.

You can print and download your career statement in PDF format.

From the age of 55 onwards, you can report to your pension plans the anomalies in your career statement and ask for their correction: missing jobs, inconsistencies, etc.

Retirement Info - Correcting my career

Your pension funds are directly informed. You can then follow their treatment on your pension account.