From Seeking Alpha:
Yet 70 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index have either started to pay dividends or boosted them so far in 2009. That exceeds the number of companies (59) that have trimmed or eliminated dividends.
To be sure, dividend increases usually outnumber cuts in the S&P 500 by a wide margin. In 2007, there were only 12 decreases to 298 increases. Even last year—a terrible one by any measure, particularly in the dividend-rich financial sector—there were 241 increases and just 62 cuts. The dollar impact of the 2009 cuts has been much greater too, accounting for $45.1 billion of lost income.
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