Any point in a Cash buffer in Pension Drawdown Account?

LHW99

Anyhow my point is, you sacrifice total returns for income.

In one way that may not matter to everyone. For example, my mum had a small "managed income" investment PEP (shows how long ago). She began drawing an approximately 3.5% income, and continued taking the same cash amount over the years and through the 2007/8 crash (after it became an ISA). When she passed away a few years later, the residual value was within a few pounds of the initial. Obviously the capital value no longer had the same buying power, due to inflation, but had provided a steady income top-up. Total return may have suffered, but it achieved her requirements, which is surely all any pension pot is required to do.

LHW99

The closest UK data I have been able to find on historic UK dividends has been at
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/united-kingdom/financial-times-stock-exchange-ftse-dividend-yield/dividend-yield-actuaries-share-index-ftse-all-share
which indicates that between 1988 and 2018, the FTSE All-share yield varied between 2.08% and 5.06%. I haven't found any inflation adjusted data yet.

MK62

There's here too

http://www.swanlowpark.co.uk/ftseannual

though obviously you need to subtract the % return from the total return to get the dividend figure for any year.

Personally I think the yield figure can be a little misleading though - what most want is dividends paid per annum in £s.....though it's not too hard to extrapolate that info from the tables for any given start year from 1986 onwards for the AllShare, and 2003 onwards for the FTSE100.