You know SNOOPY, you have a great way of wording AROUND my answers where I make no relevance to them. Specifically with the emphasis on dividends. Shareholders that choose dividends should not choose companies that have growth prospects. There are plenty of such companies like utilities (have I not mentioned this before?).

As for the individual owning real estate vs shares - we've beaten the issue long enough. You can infer from different angles but does not change the fact that in NZ, real estate ranks supreme as the main investment. It's been pointed out many times throughout the decades, even when Michael Cullen has been pushing towards getting NZ people away from houses and into the NZ share market. If a person has $1M to invest. He's not going to be crazy to put that in Kiwi Saver where the corporations can dish out dividends. What the real estate owner wants is that tax free capital gain. Oh and since there's this focus on dividends, you can forget about that tax free capital gain on corporate shares ; no one questions why.