The Australian economy is a bit sluggish at the moment, which is causing many of the leading ASX dividend shares to tone down their dividend growth.
Look at Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) and Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS), their dividends aren't going up any time soon.
However, the below three ASX shares keep increasing their dividends:
WAM Research Limited (ASX: WAX)
WAM Research has been one of the best-performing listed investment companies (LICs) since the GFC. It focuses on the small and medium growth businesses on the ASX where the Wilson Asset Management (WAM) team see a catalyst that will cause the share price to increase.
Over the past seven years the WAM Research portfolio has delivered an average return per annum 16.4% before fees and expenses, and it has used the returns to pay a growing fully franked dividend to shareholders whilst holding a high level of cash.
It has increased its dividend each year since the GFC and currently has a grossed-up dividend yield of 10.7%.
Duxton Water Ltd (ASX: D2O)
Duxton Water is a company which purely owns water entitlements and leases them out to agricultural businesses.
Water is in high demand at the moment with Australia's dry conditions, leading to higher water prices. Duxton Water is a decent way of gaining an indirect exposure to the growing Australian agricultural sector.
Since the 2.3 cents dividend payment in 2017 Duxton Water has increased its bi-annual dividend by 0.1 cents every six months. Its last payment was 2.6 cents per share last month and has guided the next payments will be 2.7 cents per share and 2.8 cents per share.
The next 12 months amount to a grossed-up dividend yield of 4.9%.
Altium Limited (ASX: ALU)
Altium is one of the best technology businesses on the ASX, it provides electronic PCB design software, which allows the engineers to create the devices, vehicles, items and services of the future.
It has a wide-ranging, high-quality list of clients including Toyota, John Deere, NASA, Space X, Tesla, Google, NASA, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and many more.
Altium plans to grow its revenue and profit margins over the long-term whilst keeping its balance sheet debt free.
An attractive commitment by Altium is that it intends to continually raise dividends for shareholders. It currently has a dividend yield of 0.9%, but the dividend is growing at a fast rate.
Foolish takeaway
Each of these shares have done well for longer-term shareholders. I'm not sure how much further Duxton Water can run in the short-term, but Altium could still be an excellent share to own over the next decade despite the strong share price appreciation.
