Dividend checks continue to get fatter in corporate America, as more companies jack up their distribution rates.

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

We can start with Daktronics (Nasdaq: DAKT). The scoreboard maker is boosting its semi-annual dividend 5% to $0.115 a share. Daktronics is juicing up its yield even though its latest quarter showed year-over-year declines in revenue and order backlog. It also posted a small loss, reversing a year-ago profit.

Triangle Capital (NYSE: TCAP) is also shaping up its distributions. Triangle's new quarterly rate of $0.50 a share is a 6% improvement. The company invests in lower-middle-market companies, often with equity components.

Post Properties (NYSE: PPS) is building a better payout. The developer and operator of multi-family communities is increasing its quarterly disbursements nearly 14% to $0.25 a share.

Finally we have El Paso Electric (NYSE: EE) also taking its quarterly rate from $0.22 a share to $0.25 a share. It's a big deal for the electric utility with 380,000 retail and wholesale customers. El Paso reinitiated its payout policy a year ago, and this is the first time that it has moved to juice up its distributions.

Checks and balances
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.

If you want to track these stocks to see if and when they hike their payouts again, consider adding them to MyWatchlist.