From Forbes:
In the short term, if interest rates go up and the market gets hit, dividend stocks can be expected to get hit too. The rising-dividends angle is something that needs to play out over time. There’s no guarantee of anything. But comparing what’s certain and what’s very highly probable elsewhere in the income universe and given where we are now in the interest-rate super-cycle, it seems prudent to have equity income pay an important role in one’s overall income portfolio.