That is the question spurred by proposed changes to the US Census survey.

Specifically, the Census Bureau has concluded that questions pertaining to marriage and divorce provide “low benefit and low cost”.

But not everyone agrees with their assessment.

Some experts believe that marriage and divorce data have important implications, including practical ones for Social Security benefits planning and more academically for broad-based socio-economic research – and the census may be the only viable source of such data.

It turns out that states may not report this data, or may not do so accurately, anyway. Who knew?

At this time, the Census Bureau’s proposed changes to the Census survey are inviting comments – and receiving quite a few highly opinionated ones

Time will tell the outcome of this vigorous debate.

Read more in this CNN Money piece: Should we stop tracking the divorce rate?