15 stocks that have grown dividends the most — and nearly all have beaten the S&P 500

Dividend growth and total return are often linked, but not always in the way investors expect. A stock's current yield tells you what it pays today; dividend growth tells you how quickly that payout is expanding. Companies able to raise dividends consistently tend to have durable earnings, disciplined capital allocation, and healthy balance sheets — qualities that markets have historically rewarded over full cycles.

That helps explain why a list of the market's fastest dividend growers skews toward stocks that have also outpaced the S&P 500. A low initial yield isn't necessarily a drawback: a modest payout growing at a strong clip can compound into a meaningful income stream, and rising payouts can signal management's confidence in future cash flows.

For readers, the takeaway is less about any single name than about the metric itself. Dividend growth is a useful lens for evaluating business quality, but it is backward-looking. What matters is whether earnings and free cash flow can keep supporting future increases — and whether the valuation already reflects that expectation.