Majority wants government to shrink inequality gap

A majority of people in the United States say the government should make a more forceful effort to shrink the income gap between rich and poor people, a new poll suggests.

Sixty-six percent of the public say the government should do more to reduce the gap, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday.

CNN notes 63 percent wanted the government to do the same more than 30 years ago in 1983. 

{mosads}Thirty percent surveyed today, by contrast, said they don’t think the government should intervene.

The survey comes just a week after President Obama pressed in his State of the Union address for the gap to tighten.

Most Republicans oppose measures to decrease the gap, according to CNN. Nine in 10 Democrats support government intervention, as do two-thirds of independents. 

Seventy percent of women favor government measures while 62 percent of men said they do, the poll indicates.

Nearly 60 percent of those who earn more than $100,000 a year also say the government should help minimize the inequality gap.

The poll was conducted from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2., with 1,010 people being surveyed by phone. The sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.