If you're an experienced income investor, then you know not all dividend stocks are built the same. Some of them can reliably dish out dividends even in the worst of times. Others sometimes struggle to keep paying dividends, if they continue paying them at all.

These disparate outcomes prompt one critical but simple question: What makes safe dividend stocks safe? Here are the top three things the market's most dependable dividend stocks all have in common.

There was a time when certain companies were downright recession-proof. Utility companies in the 1960s and '70s are a good example. Even the wildest of price swings and deepest of recessions didn't rattle power providers' operating costs. These days, though, many aspects of almost every business are sensitive to economic weakness and its causes (like inflation and soaring interest rates).

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Source Fool.com