The Inter-American Statistical Institute (IASI) was founded on May 12, 1940, at the initiative of a group of members of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), interested in maintaining and developing in the American region activities and programs that were being carried out by the ISI, and that were interrupted as a consequence of World War II.

The original idea was that of establishing a transitory mechanism, destined to operate during the time of the world conflagration. Nevertheless, IASI quickly implemented a series of projects of great impact in the statistical development of the countries in the Western Hemisphere, thus surpassing the original idea.

Among the projects developed by the IASI in its first decade of existence, it is worth to emphasize the launch, in 1943, of the publication of its Journal "Estadística", which continues to be edited at the present time; the promotion and holding of training programs; the starting of a series of Inter-American Statistical Congresses (1947 and 1950), later assumed by the Organization of American States (OAS) as Inter-American Statistical Conferences; and most notably the implementation of the Program of the Census of the Americas, whose first round corresponded to 1950. In what relates to education, the promotion of the establishment of university programs for the formation of statisticians, whose first concrete result was the creation of the career of Mathematical Statistician at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, whose operations started in Rosario, Argentina in 1948 deserves special mention.

On April 11, 1950, a close cooperation of the Institute with the OAS was started by means of an Agreement that was revised on October 27, 1955, and then replaced by another one, signed on March 12, 1985, whose life ended on December 31, 1996. IASI maintains now cooperation and coordination relations with diverse international organizations and national statistical institutions.