A Year-by-Year Record of SCHD’s Rising Payout

SCHD’s dividend has grown by around 10.6% a year over the ten years from 2015 to 2025, with the annual payout per share rising from around $0.38 to around $1.05. It has increased its total annual dividend every year since it launched in 2011.

That growth has not been smooth. Some years the payout jumped by nearly 20%, while in others it rose by less than 4%, and in 2026 growth slowed to a crawl. Understanding why helps you judge how much an income from SCHD could grow in future, without assuming the past will simply repeat.

Why risk thousands of dollars learning through mistakes when you can learn before investing? FRC’s three ETF programmes, ETF Investing for Beginners, ETF Investing Strategies and Advanced ETF Investing, teach you how dividend growth works, what drives it and how to plan an income around it realistically. They are written in plain English, need no finance degree, and are open to everyone.

This guide is part of FRC’s complete guide to SCHD, which starts with what SCHD is and how it works. It covers SCHD’s dividend growth year by year, its growth rate over different periods, what drives it, why it has slowed and what that means for anyone relying on the income.

SCHD’s Dividend, Year by Year

All figures below are annual dividends per share, adjusted for SCHD’s 3-for-1 stock split in October 2024. They show how much one share of SCHD paid in each full calendar year.

In 2014, SCHD paid around $0.35 per share. In 2015 it paid around $0.38, up 9.5%, and in 2016 around $0.42, up 9.6%. In 2017 it paid around $0.45, up 7.1%, and in 2018 around $0.48, up 7.4%.

The next four years brought the fastest growth in the fund’s history. The payout rose 19.3% in 2019 to around $0.58, 16.8% in 2020 to around $0.67, 11.4% in 2021 to $0.75 and 13.8% in 2022 to around $0.85. From 2019 to 2022 alone, the annual dividend rose by almost half.

Growth then became more uneven. The dividend rose only 3.5% in 2023 to around $0.88, then 11.7% in 2024 to around $0.99, and 6.4% in 2025 to around $1.05. Over the whole decade from 2015 to 2025, the annual dividend per share grew to around 2.7 times its starting level. FRC’s guide to SCHD’s dividend sets out each quarterly payment and its dates.

SCHD’s Dividend Growth Rate Over Time

The growth rate you see quoted depends heavily on the period measured. Over the ten years from 2015 to 2025, SCHD’s annual dividend grew by around 10.6% a year.

Over the five years from 2020 to 2025, it grew by around 9.3% a year. Over the three years from 2022 to 2025, it grew by around 7.2% a year, showing how growth has gradually slowed.

These are compound annual growth rates, which smooth out the uneven years into a single average. They are useful for comparison but hide the fact that some years were far stronger than others. Always check which years a quoted growth figure covers before relying on it.

How Much Does SCHD Raise Its Dividend Each Year?

There is no fixed annual increase. On average, SCHD’s dividend has risen by around 10% a year over the past decade, but individual years have ranged from around 3.5% in 2023 to around 19.3% in 2019.

Because SCHD passes on what its companies pay, there is no single announcement each year saying how much the dividend will rise. The annual increase is only known once all four quarterly payments for the year have been made.

Why Growth Figures Online Differ

Search for SCHD’s dividend growth rate and you will find figures ranging from around 9% to over 12% a year. Most of them are correct, but they measure different periods.

A five-year figure that ends in 2022 includes the very fast growth of 2019 to 2022 and looks much higher than one that ends in 2025. A trailing twelve-month figure measured in late 2026 includes the slowdown and looks much lower than a calendar-year figure. Some figures also use calendar years while others use rolling twelve-month periods.

The safest approach is to look at the year-by-year record rather than any single average. That shows both the long-term trend and how much growth has varied along the way.

The 2026 Slowdown

In 2026, SCHD’s dividend growth slowed sharply. Its first three quarterly payments of 2026 totalled around $0.78 per share, only around 1% more than the same three payments in 2025.

Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, the first payment of 2026 was up around 3.3%, the second down around 3% and the third up around 2.3%. Quarterly payments always move around, because the companies SCHD holds pay their own dividends at different times, so a single lower quarter is not the same as a cut.

The comparison for the year will also be tough to beat. The December 2025 payment of around $0.28 per share was the largest quarterly dividend in SCHD’s history.

The slowdown followed SCHD’s March 2026 reconstitution, which replaced around 31% of the portfolio. Energy’s weight fell from around 23.5% to around 16.3%, utilities were removed altogether and financials rose to around 8.9%. Changes on that scale can shift the fund’s income in either direction, and the full-year picture will only be clear once the December payment is made.

What Dividend Growth Teaches Every Income Investor

A rising dividend is one of the most powerful forces in investing, but it is also one of the most misunderstood. Investors who take a ten-year average and project it forward forever often build plans that fall apart when growth slows, as it did in 2026.

Imagine knowing exactly what you own, why its income rises and what could make it stall. FRC’s three progressive ETF programmes take you from how dividends and yields work, through planning an income around realistic growth assumptions, to managing inflation and risk across a whole portfolio. ETF Investing for Beginners covers the foundations, ETF Investing Strategies covers income and dividend growth planning, and Advanced ETF Investing covers risk and retirement income in depth.

FRC’s programmes and memberships are open to everyone, whether you are investing $500 or $500,000. The question isn’t whether financial education costs money. It’s what a lack of it could cost you.

What Drives SCHD’s Dividend Growth

SCHD does not set its own dividend. It passes on the dividends paid by the roughly 100 companies it holds, minus its small 0.06% annual fee, so its growth depends entirely on what those companies pay.

When companies such as Procter & Gamble, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Amgen raise their dividends, SCHD’s income rises. When companies hold or cut their payouts, its growth slows.

The second driver is the portfolio itself. SCHD tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index, which is rebuilt every March. Companies that no longer meet the rules are replaced, and the weights of the remaining companies change, so the fund’s income can shift even if no company changes its dividend.

How the Index Rules Favour Growth

SCHD’s index is designed to find companies that can keep paying and raising their dividends. Every company must have paid a dividend for at least ten consecutive years, and real estate investment trusts are excluded.

Companies that pass those screens are then ranked on four measures: cash flow to total debt, return on equity, dividend yield and five-year dividend growth. The first two test whether a company can afford its dividend, while the last two test whether the dividend is worth having.

The top 100 companies are held, with no single company above 4% and no sector above 25%. Because past dividend growth is one of the ranking measures, the index naturally leans towards companies with a record of raising their payouts.

The Trade-Off Between Yield and Growth

SCHD’s index ranks companies on both yield and growth, and those two can pull in opposite directions. Companies with very high yields often grow their dividends slowly, while fast-growing dividends often come with lower starting yields.

The balance the index strikes each March affects the following year’s growth. A reconstitution that adds more high-yielding companies can lift the fund’s current income but slow its future growth, and the reverse is also true.

This is why SCHD’s dividend growth tends to be faster than funds focused purely on high yield, but its starting yield is higher than funds focused purely on dividend growth. FRC’s guide to SCHD vs VIG compares SCHD with a fund built around dividend growth rather than yield.

Dividend Growth Through Market Falls

One of the most important tests of a dividend is how it behaves in a bad year. SCHD’s dividend rose 16.8% in 2020, the year of the pandemic crash, even though its price fell by around a third at one point.

In 2022, when SCHD’s price fell by around 19% from its peak, its dividend rose by 13.8%. In both cases, investors living on the income saw it rise while the value of their shares fell.

That record is encouraging, but it is not a guarantee. A longer or deeper recession that forced many companies to cut their payouts could be a tougher test than anything SCHD has faced so far. FRC’s guide to SCHD’s price history covers each of those falls and recoveries.

The market doesn’t care whether you understand the risks. It will expose you to them regardless. ETF Investing Strategies shows you how to judge whether a fund’s income is likely to hold up when markets turn.

Dividend Growth vs Inflation

Dividend growth matters most because of inflation. An income that stays the same loses spending power every year as prices rise.

From 2015 to 2025, SCHD’s dividend grew by around 10.6% a year, while US inflation averaged a little over 3% a year. That means the real, inflation-adjusted value of the income grew substantially over the decade.

If dividend growth slowed to around 2% a year and inflation stayed at around 3%, the real value of the income would start to shrink. That is why the recent slowdown matters to anyone who plans to live on SCHD’s dividends for decades.

When the Price Outruns the Dividend

Dividend growth and price growth do not always move together. In 2026, SCHD’s price rose by around 30% in the first ten months, while its dividend rose by only around 1%.

When the price rises much faster than the dividend, the yield falls. That is why SCHD’s yield dropped from around 3.5% in the spring of 2026 to around 3% by November, even though the dividend itself did not fall.

For existing holders, this changes nothing about the income they receive. For new buyers, it means each dollar invested buys less income than it did earlier in the year.

What Different Growth Rates Mean for Your Income

The growth rate makes an enormous difference over time. Take an investor who holds $100,000 of SCHD at a 3% yield, earning around $3,000 a year, and keeps the same number of shares.

If the dividend grew at 10% a year, that income would reach around $7,800 after ten years. At 8% a year, it would reach around $6,500, and at 5% around $4,900. At 2% a year, it would reach only around $3,700.

These are illustrations, not forecasts, but they show why it is unwise to assume the fastest past growth will continue. Planning around a range of outcomes gives a far more realistic picture.

How Long It Takes the Dividend to Double

A simple way to think about dividend growth is the rule of 72. Divide 72 by the annual growth rate to estimate how many years it takes for the income to double.

At 10% growth, the dividend would double in around seven years. At 5%, it would take around 14 years, and at 2%, around 35 years.

SCHD’s annual dividend per share rose from around $0.42 in 2016 to around $1.05 in 2025, about two and a half times as much in nine years. An investor who bought in 2016 and held the same shares would now be collecting more than twice the income they started with.

Yield on Cost: Where Dividend Growth Pays Off

Dividend growth means the yield on your original investment rises every time the payout grows. This is often called yield on cost.

An investor whose shares yielded around 3.3% when bought in 2016 would now be earning over 8% a year on what they originally paid, because the dividend has grown while their purchase price stayed the same. Today’s yield of around 3% applies only to people buying now.

This is one reason long-term holders value dividend growth so highly. FRC’s guide to how much SCHD you need to make $1,000 a month shows how growth and yield work together when you plan an income.

Your hard-earned money represents years of work. Give it the respect it deserves. Advanced ETF Investing goes deeper into planning a retirement income that can keep pace with inflation over decades.

Reinvesting Makes Growth Faster

The figures above assume an investor keeps the same number of shares. Investors who reinvest their dividends see their income grow faster, because each payment buys more shares that pay their own dividends.

An investor who reinvests benefits twice: once from the dividend per share rising, and again from owning more shares each quarter. Over a decade or more, that combination can grow income far faster than the dividend growth rate alone.

Reinvesting in a taxable account does not avoid tax, though. Dividends are taxed in the year they are paid, whether you take them as cash or reinvest them.

SCHD’s Growth Compared With Other Dividend Funds

SCHD’s ten-year dividend growth of around 10% a year is strong for a fund that also pays a starting yield of around 3%. Many funds manage one or the other, but not both.

Funds built around dividend growth, such as VIG, usually pay lower yields but focus on companies that have raised their dividends for many years. Funds built purely around high yield usually pay more income up front but tend to grow it more slowly.

Comparing growth rates fairly means comparing the same years, as each fund’s growth varies from year to year. FRC’s guide to DGRO vs SCHD compares SCHD with another popular dividend growth fund.

Can SCHD Keep Growing Its Dividend?

Nobody can know how fast SCHD’s dividend will grow in future. Its growth depends on the profits of the companies it holds, the decisions their boards make about dividends and the companies its index selects each March.

Some factors support continued growth. The index screens for companies with strong cash flow, healthy balance sheets and a record of raising payouts, and its payout ratio of around 55% means its companies pay out only around half their earnings.

Other factors could slow it. Earnings per share among SCHD’s largest holdings have been broadly flat over the past three years, and companies cannot keep raising dividends faster than their earnings forever. A recession or a reconstitution that shifts the portfolio towards slower-growing companies could also hold growth back.

Common Mistakes When Looking at SCHD’s Dividend Growth

Projecting the best years forward. The 19.3% rise in 2019 and 16.8% rise in 2020 were exceptional, and growth has been much slower in other years.

Confusing quarterly swings with cuts. A lower quarterly payment does not mean the annual dividend has fallen. Compare full years, not individual quarters.

Ignoring the split. Figures from before October 2024 show per-share dividends three times higher than today’s, because SCHD split each share into three.

Forgetting inflation. Dividend growth only increases your real income when it beats inflation.

Your portfolio deserves an educated investor. FRC’s three progressive ETF programmes, from ETF Investing for Beginners to Advanced ETF Investing, teach you to read a dividend record properly and plan around realistic growth.

Common Questions

How fast has SCHD’s dividend grown? Around 10.6% a year over the ten years from 2015 to 2025, and around 9.3% a year over the five years from 2020 to 2025.

Has SCHD ever cut its dividend? SCHD’s total annual dividend has risen every calendar year since it launched. Individual quarterly payments sometimes fall compared with the same quarter a year earlier, but the annual total has kept rising.

How much does SCHD increase its dividend every year? There is no fixed increase. Over the past decade it has averaged around 10% a year, with individual years ranging from around 3.5% to around 19.3%.

How much has SCHD’s dividend grown in 10 years? The annual dividend per share rose from around $0.38 in 2015 to around $1.05 in 2025, around 2.7 times as much.

How much SCHD do I need to make $50,000 a year? Roughly $1.7 million at a 3% yield, or around 47,600 shares at an annual dividend of around $1.05 per share.

What was SCHD’s dividend growth in 2025? Around 6.4%, with the annual dividend per share rising from around $0.99 in 2024 to around $1.05 in 2025.

Why has SCHD’s dividend growth slowed? Growth depends on the dividends paid by the companies SCHD holds and on the changes made at each March reconstitution. The 2026 reconstitution replaced around 31% of the portfolio, and the first three payments of 2026 were only around 1% higher than a year earlier.

What was SCHD’s best year for dividend growth? 2019, when the annual dividend per share rose by around 19.3%.

What was SCHD’s slowest year for dividend growth? Among full calendar years from 2015 onwards, 2023, when the dividend rose by around 3.5%.

Did SCHD’s dividend grow during the 2020 crash? Yes. Its annual dividend rose by around 16.8% in 2020, even though its share price fell sharply that year.

Does SCHD’s dividend beat inflation? Over the ten years from 2015 to 2025, yes, by a wide margin. Whether it continues to do so depends on future growth, which has recently slowed.

How long does it take SCHD’s dividend to double? At around 10% a year, around seven years. Between 2016 and 2025, the annual dividend per share rose about two and a half times.

Is SCHD a dividend growth fund or a high-yield fund? It is a mix of both. Its index ranks companies on yield and dividend growth together, so it usually pays more than pure dividend growth funds and grows its payout faster than pure high-yield funds.

Your Portfolio Deserves an Educated Investor

SCHD’s dividend has grown strongly over the past decade, at around 10.6% a year from 2015 to 2025, and it rose through both the 2020 crash and the 2022 bear market. But growth has been uneven, it slowed sharply in 2026, and no past record guarantees what comes next.

Don’t let a lack of investment knowledge become the most expensive mistake you ever make. FRC’s three progressive ETF programmes take you from how dividends work, through planning an income around realistic growth, to managing inflation and risk across everything you own. FRC’s programmes and memberships are open to everyone, whether you are investing $500 or $500,000.

Invest in understanding the market before investing in the market itself. Know what drives the income before you build your plans around it.