If you're an investor losing sleep over big market price swings, one of the best ways to protect your portfolio is to own dividend growth stocks. Reliable, regular dividend hikes boost cash payments to investors and create a cushion that limits the effect of market downturns.

Better still, steadily rising payouts increase "yield on cost" - the current dividend divided by the original cost of the investment - which means even a small yield now could become far more substantial over time.

Dividend growth stocks help insulate portfolios from volatility because of the portion of total returns that the income distributions represent over long periods. For instance, depending on the study, dividends are believed to account for somewhere between 60% and 70% of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index's total returns over time.

To deliver consistently high dividend growth, companies must have proven business models, increasing profits and cash flows and a solid balance sheet. Importantly, they need to have plenty of room in their profits to grow the dividend - companies that already pay out high percentages of their earnings can't aggressively hike their dividends without putting their financial stability at risk.

Here are 10 dividend growth stocks that have the business models and financial strength necessary to deliver many years of double-digit payout expansion.

Starbucks

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Market value: $78.6 billion

5-year dividend CAGR: 24.0%

Dividend yield: 2.0%

Starbucks (, $57.14) cafes serve more than 75 million