US recessions from August 1929 through April 2020.
Dow price decline from September 1929 to July 1932.
Average yearly S&P 500 growth, dividends reinvested, 1929 through 2024.
How much they paid
2026 dividend payouts, by company
Switch between the bar and pie views. Both show the same five companies. A bigger payout mostly means a bigger company. It does not mean a better return for you.
Northwestern Mutual and New York Life numbers are estimates. MassMutual is about $2.9B. Guardian's is approved. Penn Mutual's is announced. All shown in billions.
Sources: official company announcements linked in the company notes.
Crash by crash
What happened in each crash
Pick a crash to see how far the market fell, and how it did across the full calendar years. Then read what the insurers' records show for that same period.
The axis runs from −100% to +100%. The price drop uses the market's high and low points. The calendar return covers the full years shown, so the two are measured a little differently.
Year by year, since 2006
The rate behind the dividend
Pick a time window, like the 2008 crisis or the pandemic. Tap a company name to hide it or show it again. Remember, this rate goes into the company's dividend formula. It is not the return on your policy.
NY Life 2020 shows 6.00% here. Two other sources say 6.10%. MassMutual's numbers reflect its merger with Connecticut Mutual. NY Life changed how it figures dividends in 2011.
Rate series: Insurance Geek, cross-checked against official 2024–2026 announcements where available.
The companies
The big dividend-paying mutuals
These are the large mutual insurers this research covered. This is not a list of every dividend-paying insurer in the country.
Northwestern Mutual
Mutual- Annual streak
- Every year since 1872
- 2026 award
- $9.2B estimated
- 2026 DIR
- 5.75% official
- 2025 DIR
- 5.50% third-party
Yearly rates before 2006 were not published. Rates from the Depression years were not published either.
New York Life
Mutual- Annual streak
- 172nd in 2026
- 2026 award
- $2.78B estimated
- 2026 DIR
- 6.40% third-party
- 2025 DIR
- 6.20% third-party
The company does not publish this rate itself. No Depression-era rates were published either.
MassMutual
Mutual- Annual streak
- Every year since 1869
- 2026 award
- Approx. $2.9B
- 2026 DIR
- 6.60% official
- 2025 DIR
- 6.40% official
Company stories say dividends kept going through the Depression. But no rates from those years were published.
Guardian Life
Mutual- Annual streak
- Every year since 1868
- 2026 award
- $1.7B approved
- 2026 DIR
- 6.25% third-party
- 2025 DIR
- 6.10% official
Pre-2006 and Great Depression-era DIR figures were not published in the sources found.
Penn Mutual
Mutual- Annual streak
- Since 1847 claim*
- 2026 award
- $300M announced
- 2026 DIR
- 6.00% official
- 2025 DIR
- 6.00% official
*Its marketing says dividends since 1847, but the company history says the first one was declared in 1849.
Ameritas
Mutual holding company- Annual streak
- Not published
- 2026 award
- Not published
- 2026 DIR
- 5.10% third-party
- 2025 DIR
- 5.10% third-party
Outside sources track its rate back to 2014. The company has not published a total payout or a streak count.
OneAmerica
Mutual holding company- Annual streak
- Not published
- 2025 award
- More than $36.4M estimated
- 2026 DIR
- Numeric level not published
- 2026 change
- +10 basis points
The company announces changes and growth, but not the actual rate number or a streak count.
Left out: Mutual of Omaha. It is a mutual company, but its whole life policies do not pay dividends. Source
Official chronology
All NBER recessions, 1929–2025
Peak and trough dates come from the NBER U.S. business-cycle table. The latest listed contraction ended in April 2020.
| Peak | Trough | Duration |
|---|
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research.
How to read this
What the numbers do and do not show
What the numbers show
- The five big mutuals paid a dividend every year for 150 years or more, through every crash in that span.
- Their published rates stayed fairly steady through 2008–2009 and 2020–2021.
- A market can fall hard and still finish the full calendar years less down, or even up.
What the numbers do not show
- That the published rate equals what a policy earns. It does not.
- That dividends make life insurance beat stocks, bonds, or real estate.
- What the rates were during the Great Depression. Those numbers were never published.
Audit trail
Sources & limitations
Company claims and third-party reconstructions are labeled separately. Open any section for the underlying links and caveats.
Market and recession sources
Company and DIR sources
Important gaps
- No carrier in this research published Great Depression-era dividend interest rates.
- Pre-2006 rates are generally not published; Ameritas begins in 2014, and OneAmerica does not publish numeric rates.
- New York Life 2020 is disputed: 6.00% in the plotted primary tracker, 6.10% in two other trackers.
- The episode total returns are computed by compounding Damodaran's annual figures. They are not separately published episode totals.
- DIR measures the investment component inside a dividend formula. It is not the payout percentage, cash-value growth rate, or total policy return.