Many people are searching for investments that create passive income -- assets that will distribute cash to them on a regular basis, hopefully in growing amounts over the years. You can achieve passive income from your stock market investments by buying shares of companies that pay dividends. The problem is, most stocks have fairly meager dividends today, or don't pay them at all.

Illustrating that point, the average dividend yield for the stocks in the broad-market S&P 500 index is only 1.35%. If you want more passive income than that, you might be better off buying short-term U.S. Treasuries or parking cash in a high-yield savings account. To build a passive income dividend portfolio, investors need to pick individual stocks with durable and high dividend yields.

Two stocks with high dividend yields today are Altria Group (NYSE: MO) and Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM). Both are tobacco giants and, funnily enough, used to be parts of the same company back in the day. One stock yields 8.6%, while the other yields 5.2%. But which is a better passive income play now?

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Source Fool.com