Is it raining dividends where you are?

Some of the market's better performers are easing up on their purse strings, sending more money out to their shareholders.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

Let's start with Symetra Financial (NYSE: SYA). The provider of employee benefits, annuities and life insurance is jacking up its quarterly distributions by $0.01 a share to $0.06 a share. Shareholders won't need to break out the actuary tables to know that they will now be receiving 20% more than they used to.

National HealthCare (NYSE: NHC) isn't letting regulatory uncertainty on the health care front get in the way of prescribing meatier dividends. National HealthCare's quarterly rate is increasing 7% to $0.30 a share.

FactSet Research (NYSE: FDS) is another hiker, ratcheting up its quarterly rate by 17% to $0.27 a share.

Oh, yes, Macy's (NYSE: M) shareholders. There is a Santa Claus. The iconic department store operator doubled its quarterly disbursements to $0.10 a share. Macy's is good for the money. Its quarterly profit popped six-fold to $0.30 a share, leading the retailer to raise its near-term guidance.

Some of these moves may not seem like much, but it's clearly better to see companies increasing their yields than slashing them. These moves happened during the same week that found chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor (Nasdaq: CY), print publications producer Quad/Graphics (Nasdaq: QUAD), and oilfield services provider Oceaneering International (NYSE: OII) announcing their first ever dividends.

Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.

Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.