S&P 500 Dividend Per Share History

On this page is an interactive history of the S&P 500 dividend per share – the trailing twelve-month cash dividends paid by the index, going back to the index's precursors in 1871. Toggle nominal or inflation-adjusted dollars, flip to a log scale, and snap the summary stats to any window you want.

The S&P 500 dividend per share calculator

Using the S&P 500 dividend calculator

The tool opens on nominal trailing-twelve-month dividends. Adjust any control or drag the chart and the numbers refresh instantly.

• Nominal / Real (CPI-adj) – flip between current dollars and inflation-adjusted dollars, rebased to the latest month.
• Linear / Log – switch between a linear (default) view and a logarithmic view which can better show the trend over time.
• Highlights cards – the current value, the year-on-year move, the peak inside your chosen range, and the annualized growth rate across it.
• Chart range – jump to a span with the 10Y / 20Y / 30Y / 50Y / Max shortcuts, or drag the slider beneath the chart. Pull the data out to your own spreadsheet program with the copy and CSV buttons on the right.
• By-year table – one row per December, newest on top, sortable by any column, showing nominal, real, and year-on-year figures.

S&P 500 dividend per share by year

Below is the year-by-year history of S&P 500 dividends per share (December readings), in both nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars. Click to expand.

What is S&P 500 dividend per share?

The dividend per share is the total cash dividends paid by the index's companies, divided by the index's share count (the same S&P 500 divisor used for earnings). We use the trailing twelve-month total, so each month's value is that month plus the previous eleven.

Unlike earnings, this is cash actually paid out, not an accounting figure – so there's no GAAP-versus-operating ambiguity to worry about. It's also why the line is so much smoother than earnings: companies are deeply reluctant to cut their dividend, so it tends to grind upward and only rarely steps back.

Dividends are only one way companies hand cash back, though. In aggregate the S&P 500 now returns more through buybacks than dividends, and none of that shows up here – though the gross figure overstates things, because a lot of buyback activity just offsets the shares handed out as stock-based compensation. At some tech companies, RSU grants outpace repurchases entirely, leaving net buybacks negligible or even negative. The payout ratio shows how much of earnings goes out as dividends, and dividends plus net buybacks (total shareholder yield) is the fuller picture of what shareholders actually receive.

Methodology and sources

Monthly index prices, dividends, and CPI come from Robert J. Shiller's compiled dataset, with recent quarters from S&P Dow Jones Indices. Each index value is the average of that month's daily closes; dividends are the trailing four-quarter total.

For the underlying construction detail, see DQYDJ's S&P 500 Return Calculator.

• The dividend is the trailing twelve-month cash dividend per share of the index.
• Quarter-end months (March, June, September, December) hold the actual reported trailing-twelve-month dividends; the months between are interpolated. The by-year table uses December, so it is the real reported full-year figure.
• Real values are inflation-adjusted with CPI-U and restated into the latest month's dollars: real dividend = nominal dividend × (CPI_latest ÷ CPI_month).

\text{Real Dividend}_t = \text{Dividend}_t \times \dfrac{\text{CPI}_{\text{latest}}}{\text{CPI}_t}

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