Dividend Payers in the S&P 500

There are 503 stocks that make up the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) at the beginning of 2026. How many of them pay dividends to their shareholding owners?

To answer this question, we’ve tapped Standard and Poor’s historic data, which covers the period from 1980 through 2025 so we can see how that number has evolved over this time. We should note that the number of firms in the S&P 500 has changed over this time. There were 500 stocks in the index from 1980 through 2013, which increased to 502 in 2014, 504 in 2015 and topped out at 505 from 2015 through 2021 as a few firms (like Google, now called Alphabet) split up their shares into different classes (GOOG and GOOGL) that were large enough to qualify to be included in the index. There have been 503 companies in the S&P 500 since 2022.

We’ll also provide some background information that helps explain that evolution. But first, the following chart visualizes how the number of the S&P 500′s dividend paying stocks has changed during the last 45 years.

In the period before 1986 and also from 1997 to 2003, tax rates on dividends were set to be much higher than they were for capital gains. This inequality prompted many firms to stop paying dividends during these periods, which you can see in the number of dividend payers dropping from 469 to 426 from 1980 to 1986, and then drop from 427 to 351 in the period between 1996 and 2003. However, once dividend and capital gains taxes were equalized, the number of S&P 500 companies that paid dividends either rose or stabilized outside ordinary business cycle downturns.

Of course, “recession” is another name for a business cycle downturn and the chart shows two major recessions in which the number of dividend paying firms in the S&P 500 notably fell.

The first of these is the 2008-2009 “Great Recession”, a harsh event for the U.S. stock market, with 7% of dividend payers acting to either suspend or outright stop paying dividends until their businesses recovered. In all, the number of dividend paying companies dropped from 390 to 363 during the Great Recession.

2020′s Coronavirus Pandemic Recession was even worse, harming 9% of dividend payers, as the number of dividend payers drop from 423 to 385. Since then, the number of dividends payers has recovered to reach 409 of the firms that make up the S&P 500 index today, which is still below the 423 that did in 2019.

References

Dai, Zhonglan and Shackelford, Douglas A. and Zhang, Harold Huibing, Capital Gains Taxes and Stock Return Volatility. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=972349 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.972349. 11 August 2010.

De Silva, Matthew. The art and science of stewarding the S&P 500. Quartz [Online Article]. 25 September 2019.

Political Calculations. What Caused the Dot Com Bubble to Begin and What Caused It to End? [Online Article]. 15 December 2010.

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Indicated Rate Change. Standard and Poor. S&P Dow Jones Indices. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 31 January 2026.

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Market Attributes Web File. S&P 500 Dividend Payers vs Non-Payers Performance. Standard and Poor. S&P Dow Jones Indices. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 31 January 2026.