Pop quiz: Which major event helped some investors to quadruple their returns over the 25-year period from 1929 to 1954?

Ding! Ding! Ding!
You guessed it: the Great Depression.

Wait, huh?
Data from renowned dividend scholar Jeremy Siegel shows that although it took 25 years for the S&P 500 to return to its 1929 levels, those who reinvested their dividends earned a total return of 334%. How did that happen?

As Siegel explains, dividends are "bear market protectors and return accelerators," because falling stock prices lead to higher dividend yields ... and higher dividend yields allow for reinvested dividends to accumulate tons of new shares at lower prices.

And that isn't the only time dividend stocks have boosted returns for investors during bear markets.

For instance ...
When I ran the numbers over the 2000-2002 bear market, I found that dividend-paying stocks outperformed non-dividend-paying stocks by an incredible 47 percentage points on average. Granted, that particular time frame is known for the bursting of the dot-com bubble, when many non-dividend-paying tech companies crashed and burned. But over longer periods, the thesis holds.

In fact, according to research from professors Fuller and Goldstein, from 1970 to 2000, dividend-paying stocks outperformed non-dividend payers during down markets by an average of 1.5% per month!

But simply picking the highest-yielding stocks is not a recipe for success. As I've noted in a previous article, high yields often signal danger, and when blowups do occur, the fallout isn't pretty: Companies that cut their dividends in 2008 fell by 57% on average for the year.

A year ago, General Motors and Wachovia were "yielding" about 10% when they announced a dividend cut and suspension, respectively. General Motors has filed for bankruptcy, and Wachovia was bought out by Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) for a fraction of what it had been worth. So it's critical to make sure your yield is safe.

How you should play it
Last year, our own dividend guru, Motley Fool Income Investor advisor James Early, revealed his basic three-part screen for how to get started researching dividend stocks in a bear market.

I was curious to see how well James' strategy works, so I conducted a study using data from the most recent recession -- which, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, began in March 2001.

The results were impressive: Stocks with James' criteria that were bought at the beginning of the recession and held for five years -- what I deem a reasonable holding period -- would have netted investors 122% on average, versus just 12% for the S&P 500!

So what were his criteria? James insisted on stocks that had:

Here's a sampling of some of the stocks that fit those specifications back in 2001 -- even one that had mediocre returns over the five-year period:

Company

Yield

2000 Dividend Growth

2000 Revenue Growth

Return, March 2001-March 2006

Sasol (NYSE: SSL)

6.0%

64%

42%

337%

Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT)

3.8%

6%

2%

299%

Chevron (NYSE: CVX)

5.4%

5%

42%

56%

Data from Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

Why it works
Generally speaking, companies won't cut their dividend right after they've raised it, so a dividend increase during a recession is an especially strong sign that you can trust a tasty yield.

Unfortunately, there are some less savory reasons why management would raise a dividend during difficult times, such as a myopic desire to provide stock-price support, an inability to anticipate market conditions, or general incompetence.

Growing revenue is one objective sign that your investment candidates are improving their economic performance even in the face of a tough market -- a difficult hurdle to clear. More recently, insisting on growing revenue in addition to growing payouts would have helped investors to avoid disappointments like Citigroup (NYSE: C), which raised its dividend in 2007 amid declining revenue, and has since had to take a massive cut (to $0.01 a share) in accordance with its bailout terms.

Drum roll, please ...
So which three dividend dynamos might help you to take advantage of rising yields today? Of the companies that match James' strategy, I chose three for you.

To review, each of these stocks has: Continued...