There’s only one set of stocks with a proven history of paying out steadily-rising passive income to its shareholders year after year.

Because of this, these stocks can help you achieve financial independence and early retirement with relatively very little risk.

They’re called “dividend growth stocks”… and not only do they pay you rising streams of passive income year in and year out, but by their very nature they could be the safest stocks on the planet.

The idea is pretty simple: You want to own companies that dominate their industries and sell their products no matter what’s going on with the overall economy.

It doesn’t matter if these companies are “boring”… the important thing is that they make money and that they reward their shareholders with steadily-rising dividends.

These are companies like Wal-Mart (WMT), Coca-Cola (KO), Pepsi-Co (PEP) and Procter & Gamble (PG).

Not only do these companies have strong histories of paying dividends like clockwork, but they’ve been growing their payouts by margins that have well exceeded inflation year-after-year.

For example, over the past 10 years Coca-Cola has grown its dividend by an average of 10.1% each and every year.

As you can see in the chart below, it’s a similar story for Pepsi, P&G, and Wal-Mart.

So what makes these companies so safe?

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First, these companies either manufacture or sell goods that people want or need on an almost daily basis.

And because of that, they’re able to operate on a global scale. They can also raise prices over time which increases their revenue streams.

Those increased revenue streams eventually carry to the bottom line and then allow the companies to pay investors increased dividends.

These increasing dividends provide a demand for the shares in the open market, which provides a certain level of safety that, say, your “next hot stock” probably won’t have.

These companies are enduring… they have economic moats around their businesses… they operate on a global scale… and they have products that have been in demand for decades.

At the end of the day, you can be confident that tomorrow and next year and even 10 years from now people will still be buying the products these companies sell.

And you can sleep well at night knowing that you’re collecting a steadily-growing supply of income from them all along the way.

That’s why dividend growth stocks are the safest stocks on the planet — and why anyone interested in generating a safe, passive and ever-growing income stream should take a closer look at these remarkable investments.