II. POPULATION ESTIMATES To estimate the number of births, deaths and the magnitude of the Bikini population after 30 years, information was used from the final draft of the Marshall Islands Five Year Health Plan prepared by the Trust Territories’ Department of Health Services’ Office of Health Planning and the Resources Department. The document is undated, but the presence of data from. 1976 indicates that it must have been prepared in the period of 1977 to 1979 when we received it. It was noted’that there are apparent inconsistencies among several of the different tables. data for the Marshall For example, Table III-1 gives Islands for the period 1955-1975 and Table III-5 gives data for the infant mortality rate for 1976. In Table 111-1, the infant death rate per 1000 births for 1970 through 1975 is given as 28.3, 33.6, 25.4, 46.4, 21.1 and 37.0. the infant mortality III-1 rate to be only 17.04. in the following estimates; provides a self-consistent crepancies, However, Table III-5 indicates We used the data of Table because it is more complete and it set of data, However, in view of the dis- the results can only be considered as approximations. probably makes little real difference the risk coefficients in view of the uncertainties that were used. This in There is also a bias built into the data because of the inclusion of Ebye and Majuro in the overall Marshall Island rates. This arises from the different death rates (particularly infants) at these two locations. In many respects the population of Ebye and Majuro are quite dissimilar from the Bikini population because they have the advantages and disadvantages of a more technical environment. For the estimates the last 5 or 6 year average of the data were used because they are probably the most representative of current conditions. From this, the following were obtained: 1. Rate of increase of the population has been about 3.8%/year. 2. Infant death rate is about 3.2% per birth. 3. Overall death rate is 0.54% per year. 4. Birth rate is 4.2% per year.