Forty women, ascounting for about 50% of the total number of adult women living on Takarajima, were interviewed in August 1970 for their histories of marriage, pregnancy and delivery. The fertility, shown as the completed number of children from the women after reproductive age, and the number of ever-born children from the women in the reproductive age, was constantly lower than that observed in the women on Kuchinoshima. As a cause of this low fertility, the high incidence of sterile women and of abortion, natural and artificial, was pinpointed. The women of elder ages were in the low level of fecundity, and those of younger ages accepted the artificial abortion in the early stage than on Kuchinoshima.
