what is the s p 500 dividend aristocrats index 
the s p 500 dividend aristocrats index is a list of companies from the standard poor s 500 index the s p 500 that have a track record of raising their dividends for at least 25 consecutive years each company is equally weighted within the index 1understanding the s p 500 dividend aristocrats indexthe s p 500 dividend aristocrats index tracks the performance of well known mainly large cap blue chip companies standard poor s will remove companies from the index when they fail to increase dividend payments from the previous year the index is rebalanced quarterly in january april july and october 2the s p 500 dividend aristocrats includes stocks with a float adjusted market capitalization of at least 3 billion and an average daily trading volume of at least 5 million in addition to consistently increasing dividend payments the index requires a minimum of 40 companies and currently has 66 constituents as of july 31 2023 3the strength of the dividend aristocrats lies in their ability to continually increase dividend payments to shareholders when compared to the s p 500 itself the aristocrats index has not outperformed the s p 500 in either 1 year 3 year or 5 year annualized returns as of aug 28 2023 4one criticism of companies on the dividend aristocrats list is they sometimes use share buybacks to facilitate dividend increases the problem is a true dividend aristocrat should increase payouts to shareholders from year to year and if the company is overpaying for its shares it may not be acting in shareholders best interests even if dividends are increasing s p 500 dividend aristocrats constituentsdividend aristocrats come from various industries and sectors and are of varying ages though of course they have to have been in business for a quarter century at least some companies have booked dividend growth for decades such as emerson electric co emr which sells electronic products and engineering services to industrial clients 5other companies like roper technologies rop a designer of software and other products and a o smith aos which makes water heating and purification equipment became eligible in 2018 6in jan 2023 nordson corp ch robinson worldwide inc and j m smucker co were added to the index 7while the dividend aristocrats index tends to feature well known firms being a blue chip stock doesn t guarantee inclusion a company can be dropped from the index if it does not increase its dividend for one year or if it is removed from the broader s p 500 index 8 the 2008 recession in particular caused the removal of many big name companies from the list like bank of america bac general electric ge and pfizer pfe 9as of july 31 2023 nearly half of the s p 500 dividend aristocrat companies fall into one of two sectors industrials 24 1 or consumer staples 22 8 materials 12 5 financials 11 and healthcare 10 4 are other significant sectors here are the 10 leading individual companies as of july 31 2023 10investing in the s p 500 dividend aristocratsexchange traded funds etf are a popular way of gaining exposure to the list of dividend aristocrats one popular fund that directly follows the index is the proshares s p 500 dividend aristocrats etf nobl other funds that track dividend stocks but don t directly follow the index include the ishares select dividend etf dvy the spdr s p global dividend etf wdiv and the ishares core high dividend etf hdv even though they re not trying to track the index each fund tends to include some of the aristocrats since the universe of steadily rising dividend issuers isn t all that diverse 