Well, this is an interesting chart! Thank you for posting it.
I genuinely wonder if post WWII dividend payout volatility smoothing out is coincidence or whether this is has just been an exceptionally steady dividend payout period in the grand scheme of things (of people looking back at this graph in a thousand years and in mundane economist cocktail conversations they will point at 1980 to 2024 as the one off steady dividend payoff period, an anomaly for a millenium).
Mathematical economists will seek to explain this in hindsight, maybe even Nobel prizes will be awarded over this … 
I would not know either way, though I remain optimistic as a general principle.
My personal lesson is that the hammer I used for this job — FastGraphs — only provides a 20 year backward looking view, which seems … well, it’s within a 40 year trend or so, but going back further, things look at lot messier.
The most messy periods seem WW related, though?
Ah, sorry, I’ve posted about this before in this forum and I feel a little shy reposting it.
Stockpicking portfolio, which is about 3/4 of my pillar I portfolio, which is about 2/3 of all my pillars (I+II+III).
Pillar II is 1/3 invested with my current employer, so downward protected but only growing at 1%, the other 2/3 were, ahem, forgotten in a Freizügigkeitskonto. The assets in the Freizügikeitskonto only just this year made a positive overall return over the past few years. Pillar 3 is very conservatively invested with probably negative real returns over the past few years.
I don’t think there exists a general “formula”.
My personal guidelines would be (if this sounds like investing 101 that’s exactly what it is):
- closely observe your incoming cash flow, see if covers your needs (aka expenses).
- in the hopefully occurring case of income exceeding your expenses
- invest your additional surplus income in reasonable investments
– fin –