Business and Financial How Important are Dividends in the S&P 500's Total Returns?

In a word, very. Dividend income has represented roughly one-third of the total return on the Standard & Poor's 500 index since 1926.* According to S&P, the portion of total return attributable to dividends has ranged from a high of 53% during the 1940s—in other words, more than half that decade's return resulted from dividends—to a low of 14% during the 1990s, when the development and rapid expansion of the Internet meant that investors tended to focus on growth.*

And in individual years, the contribution of dividends can be even more dramatic. In 2011, the index's 2.11% average dividend component represented 100% of its total return, since the index's value actually fell by three-hundredths of a point.** And according to S&P, the dividend component of the total return on the S&P 500 has been far more stable than price changes, which can be affected by speculation and fickle market sentiment.

Dividends also represent a growing percentage of Americans' personal incomes. That's been especially true in recent years as low interest rates have made fixed-income investments less useful as a way to help pay the bills. In 2012, dividends represented 5.64% of per capita personal income; 20 years earlier, that figure was only 3.51%.*

*Source: "Dividend Investing and a Look Inside the S&P Dow Jones Dividend Indices," Standard & Poor's, September 2013

**Source: www.spindices.com, "S&P 500 Annual Returns" as of 3/13/2015

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