Indeed, investors' thirst for yield and income coupled with still low interest rates has, until recently, been a boon for the consumer staples and utilities sectors. The SPDR S&P Dividend (ETF) (NYSE: SDY), an ETF with a sector lineup that can be considered defensive, is up 14.2 percent year-to-date, including dividends paid. That is better than double the 5.7 percent returned by the S&P 500 over the same period.

“During the periods of Quantitative Easing II and Quantitative Easing III—when monetary easing suppressed the long-term Treasury yield below the dividend yield for stocks—investors’ hunt for yield lifted the valuation of high dividend stocks above its historical average and the spread measure dipped below its five-year average, indicating dividend stocks were slightly overvalued,” said State Street Vice President David Mazza in a recent note.

SDY only holds stocks that a have a minimum dividend increase streak of 20 years. The ETF's largest sector weight is 16.1 percent to industrials, followed by 15.4 percent to financial services, a sector that has been displaying favorable dividend growth trends for several years. Neither of those sectors are richly valued relative to historical norms. In fact, financials are inexpensive against long-term averages.

Another critical element regarding dividend growth stocks is that these stocks perform notably less poorly during bear markets. According to State Street data, the average drawdown for the S&P 500 during its worst 15 months is almost 7.6 percent, but the average drawdown for SDY's underlying index during those months was less than 5.8 percent.