This study seeks to discover whether beginning kindergarteners vary in early literacy readiness according to their county's metro/non-metropolitan status, county-level economic and social characteristics, individual demographic characteristics, family social capital resources, and preschool childcare. Using student-level data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort and county-level data from various secondary sources, we estimate a two-level hierarchical linear model to test the relationship between early literacy ability and individual and county demographic and structural factors. Results show that there is a direct association between living in a nonmetropolitan county and early literacy ability at the beginning of kindergarten, but that the direction and strength of these relationships depends on individual ethnicity and socioeconomic status, as well as the social and economic characteristics of the county. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.