To be able to retire and receive a pension, conditions of age and minimum number of quarters of old-age insurance contributed during his professional career are required to benefit from a full pension. These quarters express the duration of insurance for each asset, but they are based on the income received at a time in their working life, and not the time worked, more precisely on the amount of income subject to old-age contributions. These are the ones that allow you to validate the quarters that count for your retirement and determine the amount of your pension.
Whether for private sector employees, for the self-employed, for civil servants, etc., therefore for most basic pension schemes, a quarter of retirement expresses the duration of pension insurance. In other words, a quarter designates the counting unit of the pension insurance period, i.e. the periods during which you have paid contributions to your pension funds.
Please note, however:the validation of a quarter does not depend on the actual duration of work. Having worked 3 months does not mean that you have validated a quarter of retirement. The validation of a quarter depends on the income received, and more specifically on the amount of income received and subject to old-age contributions.
When retiring, several types of retirement quarters are taken into account to know your rights in this area. First, the quarters that gave rise to the payment of old-age contributions to the pension funds. Then quarters called "similar quarters" which correspond to periods of work interruption such as periods of unemployment, military service, sick leave, industrial accident (essentially for private sector employees), for disability , and maternity leave. Finally, certain types of quarters can be granted automatically to people who have had or raised one or more children, who have had a disabled adult in their care, or to employees exposed to specific risks in their work and who have an account. prevention professional.
The quarters contributed, assimilated or granted count in the same way to determine the duration of pension insurance for each retiree and therefore the amount of their pension.
The validation of a quarter of retirement depends on the income you received during your professional career and which was subject to old-age contributions paid to your pension funds, and not on the time you actually worked.
Thus, to validate a quarter in the private sector, you must have contributed during the year on the basis of a gross salary equal to 150 times the hourly minimum wage in force on 1 January of the year concerned, i.e., currently, to have collected in the year at least €1,537.50 to validate a quarter.
It is legally possible to validate a maximum of 4 terms per calendar year of work. This means, given the value of the current hourly minimum wage, that to validate 4 quarters, you must have contributed on the basis of a gross annual salary of €6,150. This ceiling applies to private sector employees whether they work full-time or part-time.
Namely:the method of calculation to validate a quarter of retirement is different the last year preceding his retirement. During that year, it is no longer the income subject to old-age contributions that is taken into account but the periods actually worked per quarter. Thus, an employee who retires on August 1, for example, only benefits from 2 validated quarters.
On the other hand, in the public service and for certain special pension schemes, the rule for validating a quarter is different:you must have had a period of 90 days of activity to validate a quarter.
A minimum number of quarters of pension insurance is required, depending on the year of birth, to benefit from a full pension. For example, for private sector employees and sedentary civil servants born between 1955 and 1957, it is necessary to have validated 166 quarters, 169 quarters for those born between 1964 and 1966, or 172 quarters for those born in 1973 and after. When the necessary number of quarters is not reached, the amount of the pension is reduced (we speak of a discount).
Each person has the possibility of knowing the number of quarters that he has validated for his retirement since the beginning of his professional activity by creating a personal account on the site lassuranceretraite.fr, in particular thanks to the simulator "M@rel" available on this site.
Namely:in terms of retirement, it is possible to complete one's professional career, and therefore to increase the number of quarters of retirement by buying back quarters which, in the end, add to the number of quarters already acquired and improve the amount of the pension.
Thus, the persons concerned can buy back quarters of retirement for the years of higher education they have completed, for internship periods, or even buy back contributions for periods for which they have not contributed.
