S&P 500 Dividends

A recent article geared toward investors yields some interesting dividend information. For example, over the past 10 years, the dividend payout ratio for the S&P 500 Index as a whole has been as low as 50.76 percent in 2002 and as high as 107.47 percent in 2008. Over this 10 year period, 18 S&P 500 companies have been able to reduce the payout ratio by more than five percent per year, but more impressively, eight of those companies have actually increased dividends by more than seven percent per year. These companies have been able to reduce the payout ratio but increase dividends, an indication of the fast earnings growth in these eight companies.