For those of you interested in becoming knowledgeable about stock dividends and how a dividend focused approach to investing can be quite usefull, regardless of whether you are retired or not, I can recommend a book, by Josh Peters (an equities strategist for M*).  The book is entitled, "The Ultimate Dividend Playbook: Income, Insight, and Independence for Today's Investor".

Basically, the book shows how the current dividend yield of a stock, as well as it's dividend growth rate, can be used to estimate it's future return.