Kyodo News is reporting that Japan is home to a fifth of the world’s richest 10% of adults in terms of global household wealth, a United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research study revealed Tuesday.

The research shows that Japan comes second only to the United States where a quarter of the wealthiest 10% reside. Germany provides the closest rival to Japan being home to 8% of the specified elite. In the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken statistics indicate that, in the year 2000, the richest 10% of adults accounted for a staggering 85% of global assets.

The figures go some way to highlighting the huge discrepancies in wealth across the world, namely that the richest 2% of adults own more than half of global household wealth.

At $181,000 per capita, Japan has the highest average wealth of all the countries, which compares with data at the other end of the spectrum, for example, India with per capita assets of $1,100.

The report states that while wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries —collectively holding almost 90% of total world wealth —there are very different patterns of wealth inequalities within the various countries.

“Wealth inequality is not as high in Japan as it is in the U.S.,” Director and Co-Author of the report Anthony Shorrocks said at the launch in London. “In fact if you look at the figures closely, you’ll see that there’s almost nobody in Japan in the bottom half of the wealth distribution. In the U.S. there’s rather more wealth inequality, so there are more people at the bottom end and more people at the top end,” Shorrocks explained.

He puts Japan’s high standing in the world distribution of household wealth down to the country’s high average income and large population, as well as Japanese people’s propensity to put money in savings accounts due to a “strong preference for liquidity and a lack of confidence in financial markets.”

Shorrocks does however admit that he was surprised Japan had quite such a strong membership of the top 10%.

“I visit Japan and the U.S. fairly often and I think the wealth is much more blatant in the U.S. In Japan you can see people have a good standard of living but the Japanese don’t use their wealth in quite such an extravagant way,” Shorrocks said.

Both the United States and Japan feature even more strongly among the richest 1% of individuals in the world, with 37% residing in the United States and 27% in Japan.