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The population continues to increase, but the rate is declining. A graph I recently saw shows that it will take 14 years to add the next billion from 6 to 7, 15 years to add the next billion, from 7 to 8, and 20 years to add the next billion, from 8 to 9. That will put us at 9 billion by 2048 -- so the concept of a declining population is consistent with the CIA numbers you cite.

Now, of course, 9 billion is more than 6 billion, but the next factor is that the average AGE of those 9 billion is going to go way up. Remember, it is only young people who reproduce. So even though the absolute number will be 50% higher, the ability of that number to continue to grow is going to be severely reduced.

The Soviet Union is already losing population. Japan is right on the edge. Italy is close to the edge. These are trends that have been noticed in developed countries for a decade now. What is more remarkable is that they are now being seen in poor coutries. The phenomemon is called 'growing old before you grow rich", and is going to be a problem for countries like China.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp98/ib98-4.pdf

World population reached:
1 billion in 1804,
2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
3 billion in 1960 (33 years)
4 billion in 1974 (13 years)
5 billion in 1987 (12 years)
6 billion in 1999 (12 years)
7 billion in 2013 (14 years - projected)
8 billion in 2028 (15 years - projected)
10.7 (high) or 8.9 (middle) or 7.3 (low) billion projected for 2050

The world is adding about 78 million more people every year, the population of France, Greece and Sweden combined, or equivalent to a city the size of San Francisco every three days.

Birth rates are falling worldwide but death rates are declining even faster.

http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1999/09/28/

Lester R. Brown and Brian Halweil
As world population approaches 6 billion on October 12, the HIV epidemic is measurably slowing population growth. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of 800 million people, where the epidemic is spiraling out of control. If a low-cost cure is not found soon, countries with adult HIV infection rates over 20 percent, such as Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, will lose one fifth or more of their adult population to AIDS within the next decade.

When the United Nation's demographers did their biennial update of world population numbers and projections in October of 1998, they reduced the projected global population for 2050 from 9.4 billion to 8.9 billion. Of this 500 million drop, two thirds was because of falling fertility. That's the good news. The bad news is that one third of the fall was the result of rising mortality from AIDS.

Fourth in a series of reports on global population issues leading up to the Day of 6 Billion, October 12, 1999. Additional information and resources can be found at
http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/pop2.html

From a blog, attributed to the NY Times:

http://moonagewebdream.blogs.com/moonage_webdream/2004/08/population_bomb.html

Population Bomb
Remember the population bomb, the fertility explosion set to devour the world's food and suck up or pollute all its air and water? Its fuse has by no means been plucked. But over the last three decades, much of its Malthusian detonation power has leaked out.....

Half the world's population growth is in six countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh and China (despite its slowed birthrate).
Other than China, those five countries don't have the land nor the resources to support their exploding populations. Whether it be famine, disease, war, or most likely a combination of all of the above, their rate will slow as well.

Ever since 1968, when the UN Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.3 billion, would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at 9 billion.

Where did those billions go? Millions of babies have died, a fraction of them from AIDS, far more from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, even measles. More millions have been aborted, either to avoid birth or, as in China and India, to avoid giving birth to a girl. (Cheap ultrasound technology has in the last decade made it easy to determine a child's sex.)
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But even AIDS and abortion are drops in the demographic bucket. The real missing billions are the babies who were simply never conceived.
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They weren't conceived because their would-be elder brothers and sisters survived, or because women's lives improved. In the rich West, Mom went to college and decided that putting three children through graduate school would be unaffordable. In the poor Eastern or Southern parts of the globe, Mom found a sweatshop job and didn't need a fourth or fifth child to fetch firewood.
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