Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso takes on ‘people who don't give birth’

After telling Japan's growing ranks of elderly they should "hurry up and die", Finance Minister Taro Aso has turned his penchant for gaffes on "people who don't give birth".

The former prime minister, whose mouth has a habit of running away with him, said pensioners were not to blame for the spiralling social welfare costs of a rapidly ageing society.

"There are many people who are creating the image that (the increasing number of) elderly people is bad, but more problematic is people who don't give birth," Aso said in a speech in Sapporo, local media reported yesterday.

The comments came as Aso was stumping ahead of a general election on Sunday.

Japan has a birth rate - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - of around 1.4, far below replacement level.

A dearth of childcare, financial insecurity and gloom about the future have all been blamed for the lack of children in Japan.